ISSUE 78
Thursday July 8, 2010
**National album tour AUG/SEP now on sale. Click HERE.**
**Northcote video airing on Video Hits this weekend**

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LT BIRTHDAYS

Happy Birthday my dear Nan, Edna Heazlewood 84 today!
Happy Birthday my dear Beck! 40 today!
Happy Birthday Ringo Starr 70 yesterday!

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STREET TEAM NEEDED – POSTERS / MERCH

Would you like to put some posters up in your hometown in lieu of tickets to shows and promo albums? Alternatively, we seek retail superstars to operate the official merchandise desk in exchange for glamorous items. Teams of two tend to work best. Check the tour schedule and see where you and your pal / partner may be able to assist. In either case send an email to anthea at nibblesmusic dot com with BP STREET TEAM in the subject along with your name, number, postal address and brief experience / aspirations.

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NORTHCOTE SINGLE TOUR HIGHLIGHTS

1. Josh Earl and I sitting in an Adelaide café watching a Nan in salmon trackies pulling a trolley.
2. Trying to order an orange, pineapple and ginger juice in same café. The waiter found it amusing. ‘We don’t have ginger but we do have guava,’ he offered, as if it works like that. Out of milk for your coffee? Try mayonnaise.
3. Improvising shouty blues songs about local shops shutting down. These included the Ducks Nuts pub being changed to Silk in Newcastle, the closure of North Hobart Praties and the demise of Magic Mountain in Glenelg.
4. Josh secretly tweeting about me: “i’m on a bus with the bedroom philosopher. He’s eating a tuna sandwich. NOT ON A BUS PHILOSOPHER. That’s not a public food / i’m at the airport 3 hours early. The philosopher is cranky. It is quite funny. His lunch was red rooster / the philosopher is now being harassed at the security check in. He is so cranky. It is so funny / he had to unpack his bag of leads and underwear. Durps are everywhere / now being checked for bombs. It’s like a script / landed and the cranky continues, he’s just told the cab driver to turn down his radio.”
5. Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Dancer In The Dark’ coming on everywhere we went.
6. Breakfast in Canberra, we ordered muesli’s with pomegranate and kiwi fruit. Waitress: These are girly muesli’s. Me: We are girly men.
7. After drinks at the Towny in Sydney. My friend Leigh started a game of writing out our top ten lists. It began with albums and then bands, books, movies, girl crushes and men you’d sleep with. Let me just say that watching The Truman Show with David Bowie and Maggie Gyllenhaal while listening to Revolver and flicking through Running With Scissors is my idea of a good time. At one point a group of nursing girls came up to talk to us and we said ‘we’re in the middle of writing our top ten favourite TV shows’ so they left.
8. Conversation on a Redline bus. Me: How do you come up with your style? Josh: I just walk into Jack London and say ‘Make me look like Mick Jagger in the 60’s.’ Me: I just walk into Salvation Army and say ‘make me look like Graeme Garden in the 70’s.’
9. In Launceston a drunk guy pulled me aside to give me his mates business cards while they watched on, smiling weirdly to themselves. One worked at Australia Post while the other was the branch manager of Reece, a bathroom and plumbing supplier.
10. There was smoke coming from our airplane cabin. Well, the Virgin Blue crew were on fire anyway. “Go into Hertz and show them your body parts, I mean boarding pass for a great deal.”

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NEW SEGMENT! LYRIC POLICE

Bringing song writing laziness to justice.

The White Stripes – Hardest Button To Button

“I got a backyard
With nothing in it
Except a stick
A dog
And a box with something in it.”

GET SLEUTHING AND REPORT YOUR LYRICAL EVIDENCE NOW!

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GET A WRIGGLE ON GOOGLET!
Phrases people have typed into Google to land on my website:

“bedroom philosophers lyrics riding around with the aces so hungover”
“dog manipulators”
“frankie is mainstream”
“is 74 degrees hot for shorts”
“what time can i mow on a sunday is there a law”
“spray & wipe lyrics”
“youtube haunted house in wagga wagga in bedroom”
“buy twin tub washing machine Hobart”
“girls in tight shorts bend backway”
“cushions bowel cancer”
“i ve retired and now i; m depressed”
“bob hawke what did he do in 1997-2010”
“how do i know im a philosopher?”
“things you find in a bedroom when hungover”
“the bedroom felosifes”

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TIME IS CHEESE AND MOUSE IS HUNGRY!

Northcote (So Hungover) video.
Mess & Noise 100 thread-long argument about it.

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A GIGGLE OF GIGS

HOBART COMEDY FESTIVAL
July 23-31. Details HERE.

SONGS FROM THE 86 TRAM NATIONAL ALBUM TOUR

Click HERE to book tickets through GoBookem.

Featuring those hipster slayin’ style masters The Awkwardstra bring all the breakbeat rockouts, folk-rock jamouts and jamfunk breakdowns you need with a pinch of earnestness and about five seconds of jazz. Plus extra special guests The Boat People (except Tas, SA n WA) and ex Machine Gun Fellatio tunesmith Pinky Beecroft for some dates.

Aug 12 Adelaide – Jive bar (w/ Cookie Baker and Guillaume Soloacoustic)
Aug 13 Launceston – Hotel New York (w/ Pinky Beecroft & The White Russians
and New Saxons)
Aug 14 Hobart – Brisbane Hotel (all ages 1:30pm start) (w/ PB & TWR and New
Saxons)
Aug 14 Hobart – Brisbane Hotel (over 18’s) (w/ PB & TWR)
Aug 15 Burnie – Arts Theatre (all ages 3pm start) (w/ New Saxons)
Aug 18 Canberra – ANU Bar
Aug 19 Wollongong – Harpe Hotel (w/ PB & TWR)
Aug 20 Sydney – The Factory (all ages 7pm start) (w/ PB & TWR)
Aug 21 Newcastle – Northern Star (w/ PB & TWR)
Aug 22 Cronulla – The Brass Monkey (w/ PB & TWR)
Aug 25 Scarborough – Indi Bar (w/ Gilroy & The Cold Shoulders + Stereo
Flower)
Aug 26 Bunbury – Prince Of Wales (w. Gilroy & The Cold Shoulders)
Aug 27 Northbridge – Rocket Room (w/ Gilroy & The Cold Shoulders +
Stereo Flower)
Aug 28 Brisbane – The Troubadour (w/ PB & TWR)
Aug 29 Brisbane – Old Museum (all ages 12:30pm start)
Aug 29 Byron Bay – Great Northern
Sep 1 Ballarat – Karova Lounge (w/ PB & TWR)
Sep 2 Geelong – National Hotel (w/ PB & TWR)
Sep 3 Hepburn Springs – The Palais (w/ PB & TWR)
Sep 4 Melbourne – Northcote Social Club (w/ PB & TWR)
Sep 5 Melbourne – Spanish Club (all ages 12:30pm start) (w/ Stonefield – ex
Iotah)
Sep 5 Melbourne Northcote Social Club (w/ Go-go Sapien) (who are brilliant!)

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STORYTIME

NORTHCOTE (SO HUNGOVER) VIDEO **BEHIND THE SCENES**

The Northcote clip started out with a budget of 1.5 million because I wanted it to be done claymation style, but working with metal. How cool would that be? Basically you’d make a metal model of things and then you’d have to melt down each piece and rebuild it, moving it just slightly. I thought it was genius but my label said that Adam Elliot’s agent wasn’t returning their calls and the last thing he had said was that it would take an estimated 65 years to complete, but he only had two days. Then I suggested doing it with blu-tak but we didn’t have the budget for that many packets and michelgondry @ hotmail bounced so we went with my forty fifth idea which was to film me and my band doing all the stuff in the clip.

Here is some trivia – that isn’t my moustache! We bought it at a Midnight Juggernauts charity auction for $40, 000 which took up half the budget of the clip. Afterwards, it crawled away and ended up in Kram’s sandwich! We laughed, until his manager spilt chai latte on my ipad. (industry thing). Most of the rest of the money went towards the special effects. We had to build a special Tim Rogers face mask. Yes, that is actually a dude from Grinspoon wearing a prosthetic face and official Tim Rogers wig which I got in a You Am I showbag last year at the Royal Melbourne. Realistic huh? Tim was unavailable for the clip due to TV commitments. Lost was on. It was one he’d taped so you can fast forward the ads.

So anyway, what else can I tell you? The scenes onboard a tram actually take place onboard a bus which had the wheels removed. The producers then built a special two hundred metre rail circuit for it to ride on. The film business is a tricky one. It’s all about lighting. Lighting and colour grading. I gave red about a ten while brown ended up around 1. Brown used to be my favourite until people on a music blog said it was pathetic so who am I to argue? I’m into blues at the moment. Go Fev! I mean, the other players. There’s a bunch of other cameos in the clip including Angie Hart, Robin from The Boat People and Paris Wells as the waitress. I really wanted Angry Anderson to be the mixer for Pose Tattoo but I think he’s in France beating up Phoenix.

The sound mixer was DC Root! Who was in TISM but never in Scandal’us. He was the hardest to track down so after a lot of faxes and Whereisses I found him in a taxi going through West Preston KFC. I tailed the cab on my bike and had a quick word with him while the window was down. He wasn’t even buying food, he just needed a bunch of refresher towels as he was about to play at the espy and there’s never any toilet paper. Even in the band room. WHY Espy WHY? Myself and the director worked intensively with DC to channel (mind the pun) just the right blend of contempt and apathetic bitterness for the sound guy. We also did some character exercises to determine his emotional arc and back story. Turns out he was in a folk-ska band called The Band Who Played Too Much who were about to do things in the UK until the lead singer died from a smug overdose.

I do all my own kissing. Already the clip has lost its ‘G’ rating because of the intensity of that scene. I can’t help it. That’s what I’m about – smouldering intensity. That whole party scene was an added bonus. Those shots are actually of our wrap party and intended for the making-of documentary. The girl who played my love interest wasn’t even meant to be in it, she just did hair and make up but I couldn’t stop cracking onto her. Now we’ve settled down, buying a house for 750 in Westgarth. That’s per month. Not bad for a seven couple sharehouse.

That is a stunt double at the end on the bike scene. Cos I’m so cool I was unable to ride in an uncool enough fashion, so we got some beard from Architecture in Helsinki to fill in. He did ok. Overall, I’d give this clip four and a half stars and say it was the Australian equivalent of Peter Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer.’ It would have been five stars if we’d done my original claymation idea. Claymation with ice sculptures? How cool would that be?

THE END

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LAYTOPING IS MISPELLED, AND FREE! WHAT A GREAT GIFT IDEA, AND IT’LL CUT YOUR ENERGY BILLS IN HALF! SEND IT TO A FRIEND!
****************************************************************************
NOTICE AND DISCLAMMER

LapTopping is a diamond chiselled lemon fuelled rockety mcbusiness of nuclear proportions which sits in the ambient ambivalence between regal and riled. The all-star fusspots concerned with the satirical grooming of youth ideals and nightclub breadwinners may position themselves in accordance with sundial moodswing dreamscape conversational blow-outs. The author experiences pleasing emotions upon hearing about the success of others and at no point, under no circumstances sinks into a jealousy based rage wishing to throw either that person and/or himself out a window. Get super brilliant in your soul tank Dr Thoughtwaves! Tick off the glam plan with a two-tone flame pen. Today, your t-shirt pile, tomorrow an HBO special. Eat daal, play a synthesiser, wear a vest! Smile your teeth lasers into the handsome horizon. ‘Tis a daily dream drop that anoints your personal adventure like a lolly from God. Keep on suckin’.

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ISSUE 77
Sunday April 25, 2010
**Songs From The 86 Tram album out now**
**Northcote single tour kicks off this week**

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LT BIRTHDAYS

Happy Birthday Rene Zellweger 41 today!
Happy Birthday Hank Azaria 46 today!
Happy Birthday Al Pacino 70 today!

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SONGS FROM THE 86 TRAM @ MELBOURNE COMEDY FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS:

1. Climbing into a taxi after the show and having a kid yell out ‘hypocrite.’
2. Having the Melbourne tram conductor appreciation society turn up, including an old fulla in full conductor regalia including shorts with socks and original ticket bag with a big bundle of pennies that he handed out to punters after the show with a kindly smile on his face.
3. Doing an extra show in Rich Fulcher’s room and leaving one of my albums on his leopard print dress. I later met him at the after party and couldn’t think of anything to say.
4. The night my tie kept falling over the guitar strings during New Media, forcing me to make a joke of it and play the rest of the song strumming with the tie.
5. Doing the sexy tram inspector dance to a girl who looked somewhat young. Whispering to her ‘how old are you’ mid routine, hearing her reply ‘fifteen’ and surreptitiously grooving over to another woman in the front row.
6. Having Nan see the show, her first trip to Melbourne in twenty years. Her review ‘yes, you’ve done well putting together your lyrics and the music.’
7. Riding my bike home from the supermarket with a backpack full of groceries and realising that it was the same Sunday, sixteen shows in, that I’d broken my arm the year before riding home with a backpack full of groceries and having a minor panic attack, monitoring the parked cars like a special agent.
8. Being on stage, powered off nothing but my own natural energy, feeling completely relaxed and in control.
9. The jokes people didn’t normally laugh at, and the one off laughers justifying their existence.

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TINY LEGENDS – Moments that fell down the back of the couch.

From Hugh Rabinovici.

“I’ve been having increasingly tense phone confrontations with half-deaf, vaguely-aggravated pizza shop workers whilst trying to order my potentially delectable dinner. It would seem they are having real issues with the name ‘Hugh’.”

Pizzaman: What name please?
Hugh: Hugh.
Pizzaman : Q?
Hugh: No, Hugh.
Pizzaman: Q, as in the letter?
Hugh: No, Hugh, as in the name Hugh
Pizzaman: Can you spell it?
Hugh: I should hope so, H-U-G-H
Pizzaman: H-U-G-Y
Hugh: No, that would spell Hugy…

EMAIL US YOUR TINY LEGENDS.

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INANIMATE OBJECT BEREAVEMENT NOTICES

******
DEAD
******

From Sarah Lambert.

“I had a fantastic pair of boots that were tall and black, with a spattering of buckles and laces. They made me look cooler than I have ever had the ability to act and they were even comfortable. Better than that, they’d only cost $40 and had so far lasted me a couple of years. I went to put them on the other night, having not worn them in a few months. But there was something wrong. On closer inspection I saw that the entire insides of the boot had been eaten and that the heel was now hollow. Apparently a mouse had got into the house, become trapped in my boot and tried to escape by eating it’s way out. Awful.
RIP boots + ability to sleep at night without worrying about mice.”

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WE PRAY FOR THEIR RECALIBRATION
*************************************

SEND YOUR BEREAVEMENT NOTICES TO THIS ADDRESS.

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GET A WRIGGLE ON GOOGLET!
Phrases people have typed into Google to land on my website:

“bedroom philosopher”
“bedroom philopher”
“the bedroom philosospher”
“bedroom philosipha”
“bedroom philosfer”
“bedroom philosifer”
“bedroom philoshopher”
“trhe bedrfoom phulosooher”
“the bedroom philosiphists”
“bedroom phyloser”
“bedroom philsiopgher”
“bedroom felousifer”
“song club jeans wallet band lyrics yeah man my party molly meldrum”
“ajax spray and wipe lyrics”

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TIME IS CHEESE AND MOUSE IS HUNGRY!

A recent interview I gave for The Vine. It’s probably the best one I’ve ever done.

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A GIGGLE OF GIGS

NORTHCOTE (SO HUNGOVER) SINGLE TOUR.
Check the Facebook invite HERE.
Performing solo with support from Josh Earl, ‘cept Brisbane.

Wednesday April 28 – The Front Café, Canberra
2 Wattle St, Lyneham – (02) 6249 8453
Doors 8pm. $12 (door sales only)

Thursday April 29 – The Vanguard, Sydney
(As part of Sydney Comedy Festival)
Doors 6:30PM The Vanguard, 42 King St, Newtown Bookings sydneycomedyfest.com.au 02 9020 6966
$15 on door or $18.80 if you pre-book.

Friday April 30 – View Factory, Newcastle.
8pm.

Wednesday May 5 – Grace Emily, Adelaide
232 Waymouth St, Adelaide. (08) 8231 5500 Doors 8:30pm. $12 (door sales only)

Thursday May 6 – Alley Cat, Hobart
381 Elizabeth St, North Hobart. Tasmania. (03) 62312299 Doors 8pm. $12 (door sales only)

Friday May 7 – Royal Oak, Launceston
14 Brisbane St, Launceston, Tasmania (03) 6331 5346 Doors 8pm $12 (door sales only)

Sunday May 9 – Powerhouse, Brisbane
119 Lamington St. New Farm
(07) 3358 8600
Free. Headlining ‘Livewired’ Comedy. Starts 6:30pm.

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STORYTIME

ME V AUDIENCE

Me: Hey I’m just gonna pop down and get next year’s comedy festival show, do you want anything?

Audience: Jokes.

Me: Anything else?

Audience: Nah that’s all.

Me: Don’t want a storyline or anything?

Audience: Um. No. Oh…maybe.

Me: Just a little one?

Audience: Well, not necessarily, maybe just like, repeat something in the middle and at the end.

Me: Oh yeah, (writing down) call backs.

Audience: Yeah, it doesn’t have to be much.

Me: (writing down) …will seem more clever than I actually am…

Audience: Huh?

Me: Nothing. Right, so no pathos then?

Audience: Nah, just jokes and call backs.

Me: Ok. Multi-media?

Audience: No.

Me: Costumes?

Audience: Nah.

Me: Audience participation?

Audience: God no.

Me: Character shit?

Audience: Does it have jokes?

Me: Possibly, providing it doesn’t compromise my theatrical motives as deep down I’m a frustrated actor.

Audience: Perhaps not then.

Me: Songs?

Audience: Are they you doing twenty different ones over the same four chords?

Me: No.

Audience: Don’t worry about it.

Me: I rhyme shits with tits.

Audience: Sure, maybe a couple.

Me: Um, what else, are you sure you don’t want complex tech-heavy interactive stuff, me talking to myself in the
future via a pre-filmed webcam? What about a series of letters from a famous celebrity that’s just my mate doing a Mr T impression with reverb?

Audience: Again, actual jokes will be more than enough.

Me: (writing down) Just jokes…

Audience: Actual jokes.

Me:

Me: Are you sure?

Audience: YES! Now go, I’m trying to watch two and a half men.

Me; I hate that show.

Audience: At least it’s got jokes.

Me:

Audience: What? What’s your problem?

Me: I dunno, I just thought you’d want more from your comedy.

Audience: More than jokes? What else is there?

Me: You know, a good comedy show should challenge your idea of mainstream ideology, it should reflect your
world in a refreshing yet thought provoking way, it should make you laugh but also make you cry.

Audience: Sounds awful. That’s what work is for. Listen dude, you have no idea what it’s like for us do you?

Me; What do you mean?

Audience: Have you ever been in the audience?

Me: Yeah.

Audience: Of your own show?

Me: Well, no.

Audience: Then seriously, think twice. Can you imagine what it’s like to go to a job you don’t particularly like five days a week so you can afford skyrocketing rent and mortgage payments and put petrol in the car so you can go down to the beach with your kids on the weekend fulfilling the psychological models of satisfaction created by your parents. Can you begin to imagine how many times I’ve put my own welfare and happiness second to those of my bosses, children and friends due to the passive aggressive martyrdom carer status I cling to, a muddled manifestation of self loathing and arrogance. Do you have any idea how mentally draining that is?

Me:

Audience: Then think about the magnificent symmetry of organisation that is required to wade through the comedy festival book and find a show that will suit the polarised tastes of myself and my partner, secure a babysitter, fight the brain sizzling frustration of peak hour traffic, settle on a restaurant and fluke the timing to ensure plenty of time to find the venue for an evening show. By this point, just how much challenging do you reckon we need?

Me: Um, I don’t know, not heaps?

Audience: Amid the thicket of internal frenzy, toiletry aches and the pungent steam of modest air conditioning, how sweet do you imagine the sound to be of a well conceived, structurally sound, masterfully delivered joke?

Me:

Audience: And how often, pray tell, do we, the paying public, get this, consistently, over the hour?

Me: It’s not easy.

Audience: No, making us laugh for an hour isn’t easy. It’s a real…

Me: …what?

Audience: It’s a real…say it….

Me: (sigh)…challenge.

Audience: YES! It’s a challenge, for the performer to write a series of jokes. Actual jokes. Fresh, clever, unexpected jokes. Jokes that makes you piss your pants like you did in high school when you first heard the one about ‘what’s brown and sticky?’

Me: A stick.

Audience: Damn right. A stick. Comedy is surprise my friend and I’ve seen plenty of professional comedians in my time, yet there’s never been a greater surprise than that punchline delivered with a Milo eating grin, by my best friend in the school dunnies all those years ago.

Me:

Audience: Sorry to rant at you about my frustrations with the world, I just thought you might, y’know, (laughs) like to see how it feels.

Me: Yeah, okay. God it’s good to hear you laugh.

Audience: I mean, what exactly is your aversion to jokes?

Me: I just think, you know, too many of them can be a bit…

Audience: What?

Me: A bit, I dunno (holds up fingers as inverted commas) comedy 101.

Audience: And what does that mean?

Me: It’s just a bit predictable and easy. I mean, it’s a comedy show, so of course people are already expecting jokes.

Audience: And this is a problem how exactly?

Me: I think a few jokes are okay, but I also think that a comedy show can be about skilled writing, acting, vocal performance and music with lashings of political and philosophical overtones.

Audience: So if comedy is about surprise, the surprise you offer is that you aren’t going to be that funny.

Me: Not exactly, but there is an element of…

Audience: May I ask, have you heard of the Melbourne Fringe Festival?

Me: Okay! There’s no need to be cruel.
Audience: I’m the AUDIENCE, you know how it works – individually we’re sweet, intelligent souls, but collectively we’re a malicious bunch of tactless oafs.

Me: I’m not sure why I let you move in.

Audience: You need us. Now, off you go. When you get back I’ll make apple crumble.

Me: Rockin!

THE END

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LAYTOPING IS MISPELLED, AND FREE! WHAT A GREAT GIFT IDEA, AND IT’LL CUT YOUR ENERGY BILLS IN HALF! SEND IT TO A FRIEND!
****************************************************************************
NOTICE AND DISCOCLAM:

THIS EFLAIL IS NINTENDOED FOR THE YOUSE OF THE ADDRESSISSIPPEE and yay contain grinformation that is confipoogal. If you are snot the nintendoed recicicippee, you are hear ye hear ye notified that any youse, dissemidoodah, distribiscuits or reseduction of this eflail or the contained grinformation is strictly prohiwibble.
IF YOUSE HAVE DECEIVED THIS EFLAIL IN TERROR, prease notify the sender by retard ewail and destroy all floppies of the aboriginal massage.
THIS CORPORATEY EFLAIL CYSTERN IS FOR BUSINESSISH YOUSE ONLY. Grinformation yay be monitored and red carded, and scoffensive, grinappropriate or illegret material will snot be bollywood. Except as required by coleslaw, HIS PUMPANY DOES SNOT RESENT WARRANT AND/OR GUARANTEETOTAL that the grintegrity of this eflail has bean braintained nor that the communoocachoo is free of terrors, billy ray virus, contraception or indifference.

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“The courage of the artist is to see the best in humanity when they feel the worst in themself. They will be flung by family, abandoned by administration, and lulled by lovers, yet through all of this, a colourful fire burns, brighter than the sun, from the depths of the soul. When one takes a full breath in the lungs, the fire is fanned, and spreads through the body like an aurora. This is the personal God, who knows that the importance of one’s work will come before all else, especially the sour candy of self-pity.”

ISSUE 76
Monday March 22, 2010
**Songs From The 86 Tram at Melbourne International Comedy Festival Starts Thursday. Click HERE to book**
**Album out April 16 through Shock**
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LT BIRTHDAYS

Happy Birthday Reese Witherspoon 34 today!
Happy Birthday William Shatner 79 today!

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WORLD CLASS JOKES

Q. How many cool kids does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. One, but they liked the old one better.

Q. What do you get if you cross a high school reunion with a computer virus?
A. Facebook.

Q. What’s the most dangerous part of a budgie?
A. The seedy underbelly.

Q. How do horny office workers communicate?
A. Booty fax.

Q. Why did the secretaries get in trouble for doing their nails?
A. They were file sharing.

Q. Why did the Internet cross the road?
A. Something to do with porn!

Q. What’s Ben Lee’s favourite CD?
A. Claire Danes.
(credit: Josh Earl)

Q. How many iphones does it take to iphone?
A. iphone.

Q. What do vegan’s read their children?
A. Clarence and the carob kingdom.

Q. What’s Peter Garret’s least favourite Midnight Oil Song?
A. Beds are burning (due to faulty insulation policy).

Q. What do you get if you cross a graphic designer and a performer?
A. Half of Melbourne.

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TINY LEGENDS – Moments that fell down the back of the couch.

From Shannon Barnett.

JB Hi Fi shop assistant: Can I help you?
Me: Yes, do you have the new Metric album, I can’t find it.
JB dude: Um, I’m not sure, let me look it up. That’s M-E-T-R-I-K right?
Me: Um, no.
JB dude: Oh! M-E-T-R-I-C-K?
Me: Um, no. It’s M-E-T-R-I-C.
JB dude: Wow bands and their weird spellings these days huh?

EMAIL US YOUR TINY LEGENDS.

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INANIMATE OBJECT BEREAVEMENT NOTICES

******
SICK
******

From Daria Wain.

“After recently scouring a vintage fashion market for any item that was both within my price range and from an era earlier than 1990, I discovered a little mustard yellow, german made, analogue clock, complete with two alarm bells on top. And it worked! After carrying it home super carefully, I got it out to find that it wasn’t ticking. I wound it up. It ticked for about thirty seconds. Thus far, nothing has been able to revive the poor thing.”

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WE PRAY FOR THEIR RECALIBRATION
*************************************

SEND YOUR BEREAVEMENT NOTICES TO: laptopping at bedroomphilosopher dot com

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GET A WRIGGLE ON GOOGLET!
Phrases people have typed into Google to land on my website:

“remove ribena from carpet”
“the bedroom philosopher norcott”
“how to unsubscribe to the bedroom philosopher ezine cos justin removed me as a friend on facebook! boo!”
“are cruskits suitable for baby?”
“albury centrelink scam tammy”
“girls on bed with slacks”
“buy bleaching for your bum in Hobart”
“overcoming a broken mind”
“the funny of a philosopher about disappointment”
“maroon cardigan”

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TIME IS CHEESE AND MOUSE IS HUNGRY!

The Australian National Anthem?

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A GIGGLE OF GIGS

MELBOURNE
25 March – Being interviewed by Richard Watts on Triple R’s SmartArts. 11am.
25 March – Performing at the Festival Club, Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Hi-Fi Bar, from 11pm.
25 March – 18 April (No Mondays) Songs From The 86 Tram – Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Acacia Room, Victoria Hotel, 215 Little Collins St. 9:45pm (8:45 Sundays). $23.50/$19.50.
April 2 – Live performance on Triple J for Melbourne Comedy Festival. Trades Hall, between 12-2pm. Free.

NORTHCOTE (SO HUNGOVER) SINGLE TOUR.
All gigs solo with Josh Earl except Brisbane.
All gigs $12 on door only except Sydney $15 plus b.f. or $15 on door. Brisbane free.
Doors 8pm except Brisbane, 6:30pm
CANBERRA 28 April.The Front.
SYDNEY 29 April. The Vanguard. (Bookings sydneycomedyfest.com.au 02 9020 6966)
ADELAIDE 5 May.Grace Emily.
HOBART 6 May. Alley Cat.
LAUNCESTON 7 May. Royal Oak.
BRISBANE 9 May. Brisbane Powerhouse.

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STORYTIME

Ladies and gentleman, please drink up your intellect suppressant and welcome our next psychological case study to Narcissists Anonymous. He’s going to share with you some lightly connected thoughts about things that I’m going to blindly recommend. Please bang your hands together like a patronising school assembly for adults as you prepare to be partly responsible for the performance trajectory of Guy Blokeman!

Another Comedy Festival and I’m not cynical at all. I’m just as fresh faced and optimistic as I was back in 2003 when I did my first show at the Butterfly Club dressed in my Nan’s sky blue 70’s ski suit. In one bit I read from my grade seven diary about a girl I had a crush on. One evening that girl came along. I said hello awkwardly after the show, still wearing my ski-suit, saturated with sweat. She smiled kindly. Her boyfriend looked like at me like I was a wasp. They say humans can’t remember anything about being a baby because it was so traumatic that our memory has suppressed it. That’s how I feel about my early 20’s.

And now we enter the mirth pit with the sparkly eyed manicness of people who have spent too long mining their own souls to fuel these artificially constructed refrains of humour. The reward for this adulthood of sacrifice and instability? To be judged by strangers brandishing the power to validate or dismiss the relevance of our emotional truth with lilting laughter or scarring silence.

I’ve always thought of comedy as the poor sucker of the arts community. For starters, the psychoanalytic structure of the form itself is flawed – ‘there’s nothing funny about someone trying to be funny.’ Second, technically it’s the most difficult of all the artforms – trying to make an audience laugh. Thirdly, the audience are permitted to heckle! When I think of the amount of times I could have sworn at an actor ‘you’re not convincing’ or a waffly muso ‘Jack johnson called, he wants his chords back.’ Fourthly, comedians are the only artists who are starved of a basic mental function to fall back on during difficult times. For a humourist, the sense of humour is the tapped vein central to their craft. After a bad gig they find that there is simply nothing there. I believe this is the reason there is a cliché of the depressed comedian.

Fifthly, unlike musicians, who can not only get away with, but are encouraged to keep playing their old stuff, comedians are constantly under demand to produce new material. This pressure creates unnecessary anxieties in the performers mind. They are often paranoid of people being in the audience who have heard their stuff before. Sixthly, comedy isn’t cool. Despite things like Boosh and Flight of The Conchords, comedy as a genre is usually placed last for media coverage behind movies, music, books, art and theatre. Unlike the UK, where people see comedy like they see films, there’s no infrastructure here for comedians outside comedy festival. Apart from the big names on TV and commercial radio, there’s a general wasteland of sporadic comedy rooms and one off theatre shows. This also creates a lack of critical debate, while music is analysed beyond all space and time, comedy is rarely lauded as a culturally valid artform.

Knock Knock.
Who’s there.
Local comedian.
Local comedian who?
Exactly. Get a publicist.

Okay, okay, how about this. Early next year we pack out the MCG. Every comic in Australia gets one minute to entertain the crowd. The crowd are all fitted out with voting devices, like the worm in the political debates. At the end, the top 20% are allowed to do Comedy Festival. The bottom 20% are legally required to never perform stand up ever again. The middle 60% write for Hey Hey It’s Saturday, which Channel 9 has decided to make a 24 hour, round the clock show with Daryl at the helm, except between the hours of 5-8am when he’s briefly replaced by Agro.

“There is nothing to fear but fear itself, and f**king up a stand-up routine.”
Mary Mackillop.

Two nights before my first ever Comedy Festival show, I had the most profound and vivid dream. In it, I am sitting in a lounge room watching the Muppets on TV. Chris Martin from Coldplay is on. He’s playing a sweet, sombre song but is dressed as a clown. He also has a bunch of cockatoos tied to him. They start flapping and he is slowly lifted off the ground. He looks worried and keeps glancing to his manager on the side as if to suggest this isn’t part of the act. The camera follows him, as he’s being lifted higher and higher. He is terrified now and signalling frantically for someone to get him down. He is taken up near the roof of the studio where there are two candelabras on the wall. The cockatoos fly into them and catch fire. I turn away at this point and burst into tears. I walk into the kitchen to tell everyone what I’ve seen but there’s no-one there.

THE END

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LAYTOPING IS MISPELLED, AND FREE! WHAT A GREAT GIFT IDEA, AND IT’LL CUT YOUR ENERGY BILLS IN HALF! SEND IT TO A FRIEND!
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NOTICE AND DISCLAIMER:

THIS EMAIL IS INTENDED FOR THE USE OF OLD MATE and may contain information that will make you crack your dacks. If you are not old mate, you are hereby notified that any mucking about with this genius is strictly encouraged.
IF YOU HAVE RECEIVED THIS EMAIL IN ERROR, then get your hand off it and fire up, what do you think this is, bush week?
THIS CORPORATE EMAIL SYSTEM IS FOR BUSINESS USE ONLY. Stop manipulating yourself infront of larabingle.org and sending me quizzes about which character on the wire are you. I told you. I’m all of them. THIS COMPANY DOES NOT REPRESENT, WARRANT AND/OR GUARANTEE that we aren’t a bit shady and that our abn records don’t match up with our welfare payments but it’s real tough out there mate have you seen how tough it is? A litre of milk costs more than a litre of petrol. I’ve got turps on me nutri grain!
If you would prefer not to receive further messages from this sender, then fine, nah, that’s okay, no really, fine by me, oh, nah, you just do your own thing okay, I’ve always said that haven’t I? After all I’ve done. Nah, sorry after all ….I SAID SHOOSH! LISTEN TO ME. After all I’ve done for you, all these messages I’ve provided and me little jokes and all that just trying to cheer you up I was, and what thanks do I get huh? No, really, what thanks do I get? Nah that’s all right, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do right? I understand? It’s a free country. I can’t tell ya what to read can I? Off you go then. Nah it’s fine. Ay, what are you doing Friday? Want to meet up? Gav’s makin beef stroganoff. I’ll hire out the Love Guru. It should be a good night. ****************************************************************************

ISSUE 75
Monday February 8, 2010

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LT BIRTHDAYS

Happy Birthday Seth Green 36 today!
Happy Birthday Alonzo Mourning 40 today!
Happy Birthday Garry Coleman 42 today!

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AUSTRALIAN FILM NEWS

Inspired by the success of Where The Wild Things Are and Fantastic Mr Fox, Australian director Baz Luhrmann has begun production on a 240 million dollar version of Australian children’s book Grug. Angus Sampson is touted to play the burrawang tree turned haystack with a face with Rose Byrne cast as cara the snake. Luhrmann says the challenge will be sculpting the relatively simple plotlines into today’s standard three and a half hours for a feature film. He has suggested the series may be condensed so that Grug has a birthday, plays soccer and finds a rainbow all in the one day.

Not to be outdone, Warwick Thornton director of Sampson and Delilah, is planning a gritty portrayal of children’s classic Clifford The Big Red Dog. The adaptation will be a tribute to the wide range of megafauna that roamed the Australian outback 50, 000 years ago. Clifford will be a mythical dingo that appears to the Anangu people of Alice Springs.

Meanwhile Nick Cave has also jumped on the children’s book bandwagon, penning a script for a feature film adaptation of Eric Hill’s ‘Where’s Spot?’ Cave’s script sees one man’s fifty year quest around the world to find his beloved cocker spaniel, stolen by a drug cartel on his tenth birthday. The big budget epic is rumoured to be utilising state of the art 4-D technology, where audiences will be able to lift up the movie screen to see whether spot is behind it. Critics have dubbed the technology a sham, saying an usher dawdling through the theatre in a dog costume is hardly revolutionary.

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TINY LEGENDS – Moments that fell down the back of the couch.

From Caseymoira Freeman, Melbourne.

“A couple of weeks ago I was walking home from work feeling quite miserable and sorry for myself. All of a sudden, a pigeon that had been nesting on the ground flew up my sensible work skirt (tapered in at the knee, very librarian) and got stuck flapping about up there. I was quite distressed and tried to talk the pigeon out of my skirt but he would not listen. I ended up having to lift my skirt up over my hips on the corner of Queen and La Trobe streets to show all my pins in tights. The pigeon fell to the ground, looked at me and shook his little head and flew off. All while I was standing there with my skirt almost over my head. I was incredibly embarrassed but could not stop laughing. I straightened my skirt and jumped on the number 8 home still rather flush from my encounter with the pigeon.”

EMAIL ME YOUR TINY LEGENDS.

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INANIMATE OBJECT BEREAVEMENT NOTICES

******
DEAD
******

From Laura, Canberra.

“I would like to commemorate the life of Ewan, my Ipod, who sadly succumbed to disease and died today. He was very hardy and came with me on a lot of adventures, including one on the high seas in the Young Endeavour, during which he fell out of my locker during bad weather multiple times and broke his backlight. He remained faithful despite his failing health and old age and never let on that he couldn’t keep up with the hip new touchscreen kids, even when I accidentally flung him across the room at the gym. He will be sorely missed.”

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WE PRAY FOR THEIR RECALIBRATION
*************************************

SEND YOUR BEREAVEMENT NOTICES TO THIS ADDRESS.

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GET A WRIGGLE ON GOOGLET!
Phrases people have typed into Google to land on my website:

“brett lee speedos”
“who was the little girl who sang got three pockets in my overals ”
“chupa chups photo teddy bear as freud ”
“improvise thermos”
“i have finished uni and are now on the dole and cant be fuked doing anything”
“groin pain from ride on mower”
“how much does sandra sully weigh”
“horse drugs/nuttelex”
“where do i kiss my bride first on bedroom”
“golden gaytime availability 1999”
“is simon and garfield married”
“when do you sign with xoxo?”
“eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!”
“topless girls playing cricket”
”lo-fi indie folk whimsical gentle fey“
“legally what time can you mow the lawn on a sunday”
“patti smith takes off socks”

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TIME IS CHEESE AND MOUSE IS HUNGRY!

For those of you who haven’t tuned into ‘Lime Champions’ yet, here is some YouTube love. An intimate portrait of Hugh Jackman, as told to Damien Lawlor.

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A GIGGLE OF GIGS

MELBOURNE
25 Mar 2010 – 18 April 2010 Songs From The 86 Tram – Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Melbourne, Victoria. (Acacia Room, Victoria Hotel, Little Collins St. 9:45pm). For bookings click HERE.

OUTSIDE MELBOURNE
28 Apr 2010 The Front (solo) w/ Josh Earl, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory.
29 Apr 2010 The Vanguard (solo) w/ Josh Earl (Sydney Comedy Festival), Newtown, New South Wales.
5 May 2010 Grace Emily (solo) w/ Josh Earl, Adelaide, South Australia.
6 May 2010 Alley Cat (solo) w/ Josh Earl, Hobart, Tasmania.
7 May 2010 Royal Oak (solo) w/ Josh Earl, Launceston, Tasmania.
9 May 2010 Brisbane Powerhouse (solo), Brisbane, Queensland.

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STORYTIME

FEATURE ARTICLE TAKEN FROM ‘THE BIG ISSUE’ 2009.

The Bedroom Philosopher has proved impossible to pin down for this article. Initially, his publicist gave me the run-around, posting me a phone book sized list of questions I wasn’t allowed to ask including ‘Who are you again?’ I then had to deal with his manager who insisted we do the interview by text message because The Bedroom Philosopher was having a ‘bad sideburn day’. After busting him in a record store putting his albums next to Sarah Blasko’s and making them kiss, the ‘manager’ turned out to be The Bedroom Philosopher himself with an American accent.

Finally, after much to and fro-ing, I’m sipping home-brew on a swingseat at his nan and pop’s place in Tasmania. Fortunately enough, his Nan seems to understand him better than anyone. “He’s always been a very thoughtful and talented young man,” she says. “He was a born entertainer. Once we were at our local Christmas parade, and next thing I know he’s grabbed a shopping trolley, put on a helmet and become part of the float. He’s very good on the armpit – he can do all sorts of tunes.”

The Bedroom Philosopher first found fame (of sorts) in 2002 with a musical comedy segment on Triple J. He performed in festivals and released his debut album In Bed With My Doona. In 2006 his song ‘I’m So Post Modern’ landed in JJJ’s Hottest 100 and he became a share-househould name. His latest aural offering Brown & Orange, described by Pitchfork as “the disc was missing,” offers a shotgun marriage of music and humour, laced with cassette samples from the 70’s.

An ex girlfriend, who insists on anonyminity, says: “He’s a lovely guy, but I’ve never met anyone as unsure of themselves. He makes Gollum look like Anthony Robbins. He wants to be a musician and comedian but I keep telling him, men can’t multi-task! His songs were funny the first time but I needed six months of Beatles therapy to get the choruses out of my head. I was the first person in Australia to take out a restraining order against music. You can’t play his album within 50 metres of me.”

Throughout his career, it seems, the Bedroom Philosopher has left a trail of broken hearts, from groupies wanting a hug to venue-bookers wanting a crowd. One ‘Philosopherette’, who hasn’t left the house in 10 years and is about to publish her first book of status updates. says he is constant blog-fodder. “He looks a bit like Jemaine from Flight of The Conchords,” she reveals, before adding: “Oh, sorry, I thought we were talking about Scod from Tripod. God I love Tim Minchin…”

This year The Bedroom Philosopher won the Director’s Choice award for his Melborne International Comedy Festival show called Songs From The 86 Tram. In the show, he portrayed a number of public transport characters including a hipster, bogan, junkie…and Nan. The sell-out season was derailed when he slammed his bike into a car door on the 86 tram line, breaking his humerus. Upon receiving his award he declared irony dead, adding ‘The darker parts of life are beautiful, and, if you look at them from far enough away, hilarious.’

After agreeing to meet me in an Internet chatroom I asked him whether the crash was an accident or a cry for help. “No comment,” he said and walked out. I was then sent a fax stating: “The Bedroom Philosopher is tired from media and did a streetpress interview last year.”

One music industry spokesman had this to say: “What he’s doing is very original and very funny. I love it. I think he’s the smartest, freshest act around. But I’m not going to touch it. He’s created this gigantic one-off niche for himself that no-one can reach. It must be like the Grand Canyon in there. It’s got its own gravitational pull. He’s too wacky for the music scene and too musical for the comedy industry. Seriously, if I were him I’d consider going electro or writing a self-help cookbook.”

According to his ever stoic e-zine LapTopping The Bedroom Philosopher has recorded an album of the 86 Tram songs which he aims to release as he reprises the show at the Melbourne Comedy Festival. The album features, his five piece band ‘The Awkwardstra.’ Bass player and naturopathist Andy “Nature Boy” Hazel said that he was very excited about the album and if the Bedroom Philosopher was reading this could he give him a call?

“We all met at a self-help group called indie snobs anonymous,” Hazel recalls. “We’ve all left really serious rock bands to play sitar and flute and sing songs about real things like Golden Gaytimes and self-pity. We’ve shaved our beards and learned to smile again. I’m so glad we found the Philosopher. We can all put ‘carer’ on our tax returns.”

THE END

———————————————————————–

LAYTOPING IS MISPELLED, AND FREE! WHAT A GREAT GIFT IDEA, AND IT’LL CUT YOUR ENERGY BILLS IN HALF! SEND IT TO A FRIEND!
****************************************************************************
NOTICE AND DISCLAIMER:

THIS BLIP IS INTENDED FOR THE FLOON OF THE GLUG and may raid bins that are on fire and you did it Kristy. If ping are pong the nintendo recipient, goo are hereby sliced that any party candles, clinkers, nun punks or oblong secretary knitting of this plaid slack or the nut bunch is strictly dacked in the mosh pit of Flistle Flux.
IF YOU HAVE RECEIVED THIS BISCUIT IN TERROR, please notify the Mum by primeval yawning and OCD vacuuming bonanza and destroy all eggs in an omelette of despair and a hurried game of the one dice masterpiece YOGGO!
THIS CACKHANDED EMAIL CISTERN IS FOR WIZZY MCBUSINESS ONLY. It’s not yours so HANDS OFF ROSS! Stilts may be borrowed and your name recorded with camp wang officials but no grass sledding after dark unless prior permission is obtained in the form of hot pudding from a super Jesus, mega Buddha, maxi Mohammed or other upsized deity. Offensive, inappropriate or illegal material will smell like corpses and is best thrown at a Dad. Except as required by Stuart Law, THIS COMPANY IS TIRED AND SNAPPY AND WOULD RATHER PLAY ONLINE HEARTS THAN DEAL WITH YOUR WEARY FACE FLAPPING AWAY WITH A MOUTH FULL OF BREAD. The flippitywhip of this horaldo the great has been razzamatazzed backwards in a russian playpen full of UN cosmochimps, not that you would own up to eating all our croissants while we were in the party sauna having a network rut.
If you would prefer to lurk successfully behind bins at the local hospital hoping for a glimmer of inspiration for your latest instructional pamphlet please reply with ‘GROOF!’ in the subject line and rotate on your clothesline before proposing to your partner by holding an upside down calculator with ‘SHELLOIL’ spelled out. The listless huff and puff of sophisticated fisticuffs.
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ISSUE 74
Monday November 30, 2009

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LT BIRTHDAYS

Happy Birthday Garry Shandling 60 yesterday!
Happy Birthday Ben Stiller 44 today!
Happy Birthday Billy Idol 54 today!

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AUSTRALIAN TOWN NAMES AND MEANINGS

Coolamon – Traditional term of approval used in reggae.
Grong Grong – A caveman’s telephone ringing.
Tongaboo – Surprising someone at a barbecue.
Koonoomoo – Trying to soothe a new-born calf.
Boggabilla – A traditional place to play Boggle.
Lavington – Decorating a toilet seat with desiccated coconut.
Thurgoona – Drinking cheap wine on a Thursday.
Gleniffer – The female form of ‘Glen.’
Moolort – A special wine for cows.
Wareek – The shock of seeing Warwick Capper.
Dooboobetic – Someone who is allergic to the Doobie Brothers.
Terrappee – Using an outside toilet at night.
Catumnal – An almanac published by cats every year.
Tittybong – Couldn’t think of one.
Bald Knob – Couldn’t think of one.
Diddillibah – The disappointment of only getting a funsize Mars bar.
Tinbeerwah – The disappointment of only getting canned beer.
Chatsworth – The measurement of a good conversation.
Mooloo – Couldn’t think of one.
Boyerine – A dairy spread marketed at men.
Daliak – A dalek programmed to understand the paintings of Salvador Dali.

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TINY LEGENDS – Moments that fell down the back of the couch.

From Stephen Ives, Melbourne.

“This happened at the Vic Markets on one of the rainy days last week. One of our crew came back from a toilet brake laughing his arse off, he had just witnessed a young Chinese man holding his toy poodle upside down under the automatic hand dryer drying its feet.”

EMAIL US YOUR TINY LEGENDS.

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INANIMATE OBJECT BEREAVEMENT NOTICES

******
DEAD
******

From Alice Gage, Sydney.

“My pain is very fresh, and I thought I’d write to you to help me on the road to healing. Thank you for creating this platform for people to express their grief – it mean so much.

Why didn’t I take that bus? Why did I have to try the breakfasts at that new cafe? Why did I drink so much soy latte that I needed to do a poo? And why didn’t I hold it? These were the questions running through my mind as I watched my iPod slowly drown on the inside, after dropping it in the cafe toilet (post-flush FYI). Despite the fear of faeces particles that weren’t my own, I got in there quick as lightning and pulled my iPod out. First it seemed to have survived. Then the water leaked inside the screen. I furiously tried to dry it but it was no good – by that point, it was already gone. So, no more tunes on the train, no more bopping on the bus. No more arrogantly changing the music at friends’ parties when I don’t like their playlists. Rest in peace, Serial no.: 9E852010V9K. I know I won’t, because now I can’t listen to my relaxation podcasts.”

20/05/09 – RIP white iPod 5th Generation

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WE PRAY FOR THEIR RECALIBRATION
*************************************

SEND YOUR BEREAVEMENT NOTICES TO laptopping @ bedroomphilosopher . com

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GET A WRIGGLE ON GOOGLET!
Phrases people have typed into Google to land on my website:

“the bedroom phelosophier”
“worm boy hey hey its saturday video from 1994”
“north fitzroy pretentious”
“financial planning comedy songs”
“where do i kiss my bride first on bedroom?”
“does uppercase xxx mean more than lower case xxx”
“harry noblets wallpaper shop”
“cheese feeding budgies”
“xavier rudd ear plugs”
“poems about 1080 poisoning”
“bunyips childrens band coffs harbour”
“perth vegan jarrod”

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TIME IS CHEESE AND MOUSE IS HUNGRY!

Greatest YouTube ever? (courtesy of Tony Martin)

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STORYTIME

BROWN & ORANGE TOUR DIARY

Tuesday June 30. Melbourne – Sydney.
Mad Dog, Hitz and I set off on the twelve hour drive to Sydney. Mad Dog dropped an early gem by referring to KFC as ‘Dirty Bird.’ I realised I was going to run out of songs to program after one and a half Beck albums.
OP SHOPPING BONUS ROUND: In a country town an hour out of Melbs I picked up a mint condition black velvet suit jacket made in England for five bucks! Easily my greatest score in five years. Mad Dog began the adventure of finding vegetarian food in the country.

TYPICAL CONVERSATION:
MD: What’s in the vegetarian quiche?
Shopkeep: Ham.

Arrived in Sydney that night. Stayed at a mate of Hitz’ place in Bondi. The next day we had a wonderful swim and I couldn’t be cynical about Bondi at all – 23 degrees in the middle of winter. Plus we ate at a nice cafe Jed’s and had Jamaican Porridge. Here we began our tour trend of baffling waitstaff with our colossal indecision and ridiculous questions. “Are the napkins organic?” While we are actually a dangerously polite band of cardigan wearing vego’s, passive aggressively we can fairly trash the place.

Wednesday July 1. Sydney. Bar Me.

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE YOUR OWN TOUR MANAGER: There I am, having the discussion about band meals with the barman. He says we can have a free meal off the $10 board. An hour later he says “I spoke to our manager and he’s veto’d it.” This put me in a massive grump for the rest of the night. I ate my Irish Stew a bit quickly and scolded my mouth.
FUNNY GIG MOMENT: Flutes Magee wandered off stage and came back with the door money, which he’d been given by the door guy getting bored. Flutes handed it to me halfway through a song, as if no other opportunity would present itself.
SOUND GUY: Was great. A sound guy can make or break a night. (That and whether you have to pay for your own soft drink. Here and the Espy…YES). When it’s going well the soundguy is a) into you. b) lets you play your own pre-show music. c) doesn’t say things like ‘Can’t polish a turd’ when you ask for more fold back. When it’s going bad the soundguy is a) a bitter husk of a failed muso glaring at you through butted out eyes.

Thursday July 2. Canberra. ANU.

SANDWICH ADVENTURE
I’d bought a ham and salad roll, but then upgraded my lunch option further up the highway. Two days later it was found hot and steamy in the glove box. We pulled up to a rest stop with a public toilet but no bin. I contemplated hurling it somewhere, but knew that wasn’t my scene, so I decided to put the roll on the roof of the car and not tell anyone and hope it would magically take care of itself. As the car pulled away I noticed a grey haired man suddenly tearing out of the toilets, mouthing something while pointing to the roof of the car. In a chase sequence not unlike Terminator Two, as we continued to crawl away he easily caught up with the vehicle, and handed the sandwich back to me, for which I acted grateful in an AFI winning performance.

DETAILED CANBERRA REPORT TAKEN FROM BMA COLUMN:
The rock and roll circus that was The Bedroom Philosopher tour rolled into Canberra. (More of a Cirque Du Soleil type circus…costumes and pretention). Our party of seven, split into two cars went screaming up Northborne avenue doing at least 70kmh, The Beatles at a sensible volume and my arm holding an empty coffee cup daringly out the window. Nothing we could do could compare to the rebellion of ABC 666. Satan in slacks.

Seeing Canberra for the first time in a while reminded me how squares and circles it is. I went on a rant pretending I was Walter Burley Griffin, it involved a bad European accent and ‘my father was a box maker and I’ve always loved boxes. I also had a spirograph. I wanted Canberra to have a roundabout on every corner, like cement connect four.’

Canberra responded to my humour icily. It was seven degrees and raining when we hit Civic. We checked into the YHA. There was seven of us in an eight room dorm, so we were awkward about a blind date with our extra friend. He turned out to be a meat and potato Irish backpacker airing off his feet, telling us he ‘moight come dern to the univoisitay laytor.’

‘Look for the balls!’ I screamed to the driver as we winded about the back road labyrinth of the ANU. Sure enough, the big cement balls of the ANU bar appeared. Inside, the atmos was pumping. Fluro lights. The patter of evening rain. Three tired students and a Tooheys New keg change. I activated my expectation lowering and nervous energy dispersing subroutines. I reminded everyone that Kurt Cobain had played on this stage, and how people bashed down the doors to see Nirvana. I had visions of a similar event tonight, with people trying to stop me playing I’m So Post Modern.

Post gig we went back to the YHA to drop off stuff and make our beds. I sat, perplexed, staring into space with a fitted sheet half on. My band asked me what was wrong. ‘It’s so boring.’ I replied. We strolled next door into the defunct funk of Transit to get loose. I sat on a stool with Josh Earl and we did our ‘everyone’s nineteen and we’re sitting on stools watching people dance lucky we know we’re cool or we’d be a bit shit’ act. I was feeling a bit restless so I wandered over to play pool. Some dudes already had a coin down and told me so casually. I came back at them with total aggression. I hadn’t drank or smoked for a few days, self enforced mood diet, and I was uptight and ready to go these guys. Some cute first year philosophy girls bailed me up in the corner to tell me that I wasn’t actually a philosopher. I argued that I knew who Socrates was and had read some Alain De Boton but they just laughed. They said some stuff and asked me if I preferred red or white onion and it was probably flirting but then I got tired and left. Michael Jackson came on and I did a tribute shimmy.

Back at the YHA we went up to the games room where some supremely dull tourists were watching the tennis. We whispered discreetly and they glared at us with melancholic hatred. On my way to bed I culture jammed the chalkboard so that ‘Monday: Aussie movies’ said ‘Monday: Ass movies.’ Still got it.

DID YOU KNOW? That while on tour I discovered a new diet of not drinking any sugary drinks or smoking before I got on stage. It made me have a more constant level of energy and not be so frantic.

THE NEXT MORNING: I ordered the pancakes but wished I’d got the omelette. (Who wants to buy the screen rights?)

CAR TETRIS
Jesus wept did we have some trouble packing the two cars. Drumkit, percussion, two amps, sitar, four guitars, merch, bags, fifteen harry potter books, four kilos of sour worms. Suavey was the packing master, but it was dense man, real dense, we needed one of those space saving vacuum seal bags that Nan gives me at Christmas.

FAQ
Q. What was it like having best friend Josh Earl on board?
A. Good thanks. He quickly bonded with the band and did a fantastic job opening. For example, in Canberra he coaxed everyone to the front of the stage, warding off my number one enemy ‘dance floor gap.’ One thing about comedy is it gives you great interpersonal skills with your audience which can really help awkward music venue dynamics. What is WITH audiences watching the support act as far away from the stage as possible? A few people were in their cars watching through binoculars. How did we become so self conscious? I blame the church.
GIG ROCKOUT MOMENT: During ‘Cmon x 5′ I crawled underneath the stage and refused to come out for a while. Some people left and I used my telemarketing technique of conducting an on the spot survey, finding out why they were leaving and did they enjoy the gig. These people ‘had to catch a train’ which is crowd speak for ‘you’re a precocious off-key buffoon.’

WHAT ABOUT FLUTES MAGEE? TELL ME MORE ABOUT HIS ANTICS:
Pre-show some casual girl students asked Flutes about the gig and he went bananas. He said if he span around on one foot while playing flute they would have to come to the gig. The girls accepted the offer and Flutes went pear shaped. I looked up from changing strings to see a lean, moustached, curly haired boy in a jumper leaping wildly about while playing a maddening tableaux of impossibly high woodwind super crotchets. In perfect Canberra uni student form the girls didn’t seem to notice or care.
FLUTES MUSICAL SCREEN SAVER: There was a great trick, if you left Flutes standing still for long enough he’d start playing the James Bond theme.
HOW TO WIN OVER POTENTIALLY SURLY SOUNDIES: Have a sitar in the band.

Friday July 3. Newcastle. The Lass’O'Gowrie Hotel.

The Lass’O'Gowrie is the kind of unpretentious boho sanctum where they have a series of coins lining the bar mantelpiece so if you’re a little bit short of change you can buy yourself a beer. This was a welcome shot of Melbournesque goodwill. I was in a bad mood for various reasons. I wanted to buy the band dinner. I was trying to pay for as many things as I could with my extremely well timed TV money. (I’d been cut off from Centrelink that day.) Tonight there was no door charge and people weren’t there to see us so Josh was the hardest working man in gentle whimsy comedy pop.
OBSCURE CROWD MOMENT: A guy told Josh he’d been ‘powned’ but refused to clarify.
FIRST THING THE SOUNDIE SAID TO US: “I’ve got a blockage in one ear.”
THAT NIGHT: We stayed in an abandoned bowls club turned communal living arrangement between the Newie hip-gyps and indie-ferals. While it was good for the Kerouac page in our bio’s in reality it meant spooning your gurgly band brethren in a damp partitioned costume room with manikin heads peering down on you while a baby screamed for most of the night in the next room. The next day we played a rigorous game of soccer on the bowling green and bought some serious fruit and veg.

Saturday July 4. Byron Bay. Rest Day.

HOW HELPFUL WERE IPHONES IN ALL THIS: Two words, Google Maps. Flutes earned himself the ultimate Australian compliment, the ‘double nickname’ – that’s right, a nickname on top of a nickname by becoming ‘Maps Magee.’ Infact, like the x-men, we all had our areas of speciality:

Gordon “Suavey Shankar” Blake: Packing and energy. He’d be the one up at six to have a surf. We basked in his limitless enthusiasm for madcappery. He and Flutes were the only ones holding up the ‘rock pig’ flag. While the rest of us were all hommus and flossing, he was busting out the tequila for ‘business breakfasts.’

Andy “Nature Boy” Hazel: His studious dedication to reading all of Mad Dog’s copy of the final Harry Potter provided a calming presence, like watching someone rake a zen garden. Also: Snack monitor. His Naturopathy skills ensured a steady flow of fruit and nuts to counteract our sudden obsession with sour worms. (Poor Naturopathy, even spellcheck won’t recognise it.)

Jamie “Hitz Rodriguez” Power: Hitz was great for band spiritual morale, being road captain, and using his years of Yoga instructing and band touring knowledge to keep our physical well being in check. Ie have a stretch and lay off the sausage rolls. He also acted as dietician, working hard to keep me off the sugar to improve my mood. We were also able to learn about his dark past as a mask wearing double kick drummer in a Kiwi thrash metal band.

Hugh “Mad Dog” Rabinovici: First Lieutenant of the hire car and Faff Monitor. Early on in the piece Hugh identified the bands incredible propensity to faff about. From standing around an unpacked car cracking gags to chatting to the sound guy about who supported the Stones in the 70’s. In his most polite after school care tone Mad Dog could be seen clapping hands and starting sentences with ‘all right lads…’

Michael “Flutes Magee” O’Connor: Iphone Map Specialist and ’special features’ back seat driver. Flutes earned a third nickname, ‘Special Features’ after it was revealed that he would not only tell you about the state of the intersection coming up, but also tell you the cultural history of the highway you were travelling on, when it was built, planned developments and a bibliography. It was all on when Hitz was driving and Flutes was giving him directions such as “the road will veer left here, turn your steering wheel left and the car will stay on the road. Here are some traffic lights, if they are red then you must brake.” Hitz had to salute a lot of suns that day.

Josh “Josh” Earl: Car DJ chieftain. Josh supplied a steady stream of Ryan Adams and bands from New York I’ve never heard of. Not to mention his stoic, upbeat demeanour – a priceless tool. (the demeanour, not him). He also provided an indie nemisis for Nature Boy, the pair constantly trying to out-underground each other.

The drive to Byron included our first annual ‘Rudeo’ This was an internal car holiday giving us license to be rude high school boy style. It was like an episode of Are You Being Served in there. I even followed Josh’s many taunts and bought a dirty magazine from a servo. It was violently disappointing. In a testament to our sensitive Melbourne boy posterior we criticised the state of the journalism and weren’t being ironic. On our way we called into Coffs Harbour and had deliciously fatty fish and chips while sitting on the jetty rocks, yelling at the sea. Afterwards, we bought ice creams and while handing one to Hitz, Nature Boy squeezed too hard and the cone broke. After a long day of Sydney detours and getting lost, Hitz snapped with a tirade of swearing. On tour, it’s the little things that break you.

BYRON: Dudes with their tops off. We escaped Saturday night by watching ‘The Hangover’ and it was ok. The next morning I was cross at the cafe for having fine print which read ‘extra 15% surcharge on weekends.’ I started to feel like a character out of Seinfeld.
SO WHAT DID SUAVEY, MAD DOG, AND FLUTES GET UP TO SATURDAY NIGHT?:
You know the saying, what happens on tour, gets edited in the tour diary based on space restrictions.

Sunday July 5. Brisbane. The Troubadour.

By day five your eyes are maxed out on countryside, silly town names and bemusing business titles like ‘Big Dad’s Pies,’ and ‘Swaggers Motor Inn.’ We played a few driving games. You say a band name like ‘Skunk Anansie’ and the next person must say one starting with the last letter of the last one. (If it’s a double letter, like Supergrass then you change direction). You get three strikes. Nature Boy narrowly beat me. We were rewarded for our last gig of the run with three flights of stairs to load in to the venue. I had foolishly booked a side solo comedy gig for Josh and I at the Brisbane Powerhouse, so was unable to do a sound check. I felt all lame-o so scurried off to find a falafel and jump in a cab for some a-grade ‘tour downtime.’

TOUR DOWNTIME:
It’s not all coke and hookers. In fact, it’s not even coopers green and groupies. It’s more like warm fruit juice and staring at a woman getting in her car at the servo. Tour Downtime is a common factor of touring. With seven grown men in such close proximity, one needs to respect the space and the quest for private time. For me, it was like taking all the best bits of school camps, and applying it to an adult setting. Little things, like a gentle rub on the back as you stared off into space, or an offering of almonds was the closest I’ll feel to having a brother. We noted how unusual it was to have so much exposure to man energy. I myself rarely congregate in groups of men. This felt fun and uncomplicated, like a good relationship.

TOUR UPTIME:
When you’re rocking the bananas out of some prog-novelty folk-rock with your band in hot form and the attentive Brisbane audience in rapturous cheers well, you are in the eye of the bejewelled chrysalis of your creatively climactic youth, aren’t you? You’re validated to the heavens and flying high on mirth and faith and syncopated idea smashing where the hammer of industry fitness reigns down on the flint of a rock hard lifetime’s worth of joys and disasters, sending glistening soul sweat and laser words splicing the silence – the moodquake vibrato of skins slammed and strings ploughed raining a kaleidoscope of idea melodies down on the audience like audio Braille.

BEST AFTER GIG FAN: I adore people coming up afterwards to thank me. Sometimes you get a bit of ‘you probably get this all the time’ or ‘I’m going to sound wanky but…’ but the truth is you can never get enough compliments. An interesting trend with comedy is you get a lot of couples, and often I get couples where the girl has something to say and the boy hovers somewhat protectively in the background. I find this gesture romantic and quite sensible because despite what you might think I am a complete hound and will bed your girlfriend in the time it takes you to buy me a beer. We won’t do anything of course, we’ll just be in bed and I’ll say I’m tired and she’ll huffily read the time travellers wife.
One girl, ‘Dawn’ came up.
Me: Dawn’s a lovely name.
Dawn: Can I tell you a weird story?
Me: Yes.
Dawn: The other day at Boost Juice they asked for my name and I told them and then later when they called out my name they called me ‘Bort.’

LAST NIGHT OF TOUR, TALK US THROUGH THE NO DOUBT CRAZY HIJINKS AND ARRESTS / TATTOOS / UNPLANNED PREGNANCIES AND ILLICIT SUBSTANCE TRAFFICKING. SERIOUSLY HOW NUDE WERE YOU AND HOW MANY HELICOPTERS DID YOU FLY INTO THE CASINO?

We stayed at Hitz’ friends parents house. We found to our bemusement that they’d locked their bedroom doors so we had to spoon in single beds. It was 12 degrees and we only had one bar heater to warm the whole house. We had a beer and some doritos and played half of Odelay on a small stereo and went to bed.

HOMEWARD BOUND (Cue the song in your head and imagine from now on that we are also dogs)
The group split up, not in a ‘I can’t stand the infuriating drone of your voice for one more second, I’m off to pursue a solo project which no matter how much work I put in fans will never embrace’ kind of way. I mean more like the Starship Enterprise can split into two groups. Mad Dog and I set off for a two day, 2000km drive from Brisbane to Melbourne. (Note my skills, the way I phrase things makes it sound like I might have actually done some driving and not just slouched sheepishly cuing Roots CD’s and offering water.) On the way we encountered Goondiwindi, which gets my award for most depressed country town. Lowlights included our daily scrounge for vegetarian fare which ended in an aggressive stand off with a bakery woman who said ‘whatevers in the warmer’ which consisted of eight near empty bay marie trays with a frizzled egg and some grated carrot. I was dressed in black velvet jacket, shorts and blonde birds nest hair and felt intensely self conscious. The overweight women behind the counter smirked amongst themselves in a way that took me back to high school. I’d forgotten in all my Gen-Y super freelance arty fartiness that meanwhile middle Australia was serving pies to truckies and frowning whenever uptight city prix blew in. As I stood in the local target fingering a $32 Pearl Jam best of, while a tubular kid snarled at his rotund mother about which x-box game he wanted, smelling the stale afternoon air and chemically cleaned carpet, I felt a great sadness, quickly anaesthetised with a healthy shot of self-satisfied adrenalin. I was doing well and had the option of getting in a car and getting the hell back to my home. I’d worked hard and I deserved to feel grateful.

Vegie pocket crumbs dropped on the boot tramped girlie magazine, as my feet sent a ten pin of empty water bottles spiralling in all directions. I put on Fourtet, the minimalist beat matching the white stripes of the road, and sank back in my seat as the burnt orange sun sank behind some fat macrocarpas, Mad Dog set the car in cruise and tapped a jazz signature on the steering wheel. We counted down the k’s and spliced through the haze.
ALWAYS THE SOUND: Of an engine.

TOUR RATING: #1 baby.
HEY AWKWARDSTRA: Thanks, I love you.

THE END

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LAYTOPING IS MISPELLED, AND FREE! WHAT A GREAT GIFT IDEA, AND IT’LL CUT YOUR ENERGY BILLS IN HALF! SEND IT TO A FRIEND!

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NOTICE AND DISCLAIMER:
May you always feast liberally from your cosmic platter of creative inklings.

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ISSUE 73
Wednesday September 30, 2009.

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LT BIRTHDAYS

Happy Birthday Kieran Culkin 27 today!
Happy Birthday Martina Hingis 29 today!
Happy Birthday Fran Drescher 52 today!

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COOL SHOP
Having trouble finding Bedroom Philosopher albums and products? Forget passive aggressive conversations with aloof staff and settling with Motorace, now you can buy direct from The Philosopher himself and keep his fiscal economy thriving.
Items can be posted to you hastily and tastily within days, HAND SIGNED by the relatively well known pro-am social-lite himself! You then do a direct deposit like some whizz-kid.
You can get stuff like:
Brown & Orange
In Bed With My Doona
Limited Edition ‘Lifearooni’ Royal blue Tshirts. (S, M, L, XL) in men’s and ladies sizes.
All $25 inc. postage. Buy multiple items and save on maths!
Lay-by available! Up to 24 cat years. Email now! Our operators are lying down.

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URBAN HEADLINES

SECRET SONG ON END OF CD COULD PROBABLY HAVE BEEN LEFT OFF
MAN FEELS WEIRD AFTER TIPPING AGAINST OWN FOOTBALL TEAM
UNI STUDENT PRETENDS TO UNDERSTAND BOB DYLAN LYRIC
FILM BUFF DISTRACTED BY MARGARET POMERANZ’ SNORT LAUGH
HAIRDRESSER FLIPPANT ABOUT CLIENTS DAY
SPORTS DRINK COULD JUST BE CORDIAL
FASHION MAGAZINE NICE PLACE TO VISIT WOULDN’T WANT TO LIVE THERE
BOY UNABLE TO DATE AFTER REALISING ALL CANDIDATES ARE HIS FRIENDS
GIRL SECRETLY BORED AFTER BAND START TO GET A BIT SAMEY
ARTIST FEELS PATRONISED IN BANK
TWO AND A HALF MEN ON AGAIN
TEENAGER INTIMIDATING
CIGAR BAD IDEA
FRIENDS STORY ABOUT WORK COULD HAVE DONE WITH EDIT
BOY FORCED TO NURSE BACKPACK AFTER JIGGLY BUS TRIP
FACEBOOK BASICALLY A SOCIAL POKER MACHINE
TEXT MESSAGE GRAMMAR SUFFERS
WOMAN CAN’T REMEMBER WHAT SHE DID TWO BIRTHDAYS AGO
OLD HIGH SCHOOL FRIEND PUTS ON WEIGHT
MULTI VITAMIN DOES LITTLE OTHER THAN MAKE WEE BRIGHT YELLOW

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TINY LEGENDS – Moments that fell down the back of the couch.

From Tom.

“I was walking to the toilet at work the other day, and this guy from an office we share the floor with walked past me. He’s a tall, beardy, somewhat gormless kind of guy – very quite and he looks angry most of the time. I’ve never heard him say a word to anyone (not even his colleagues – even though I guess he must) and definitely not me. But as he walked past me, very quietly, just under his breath, he whispered:
“sausage roll”
I still don’t know if he was talking to me or himself. I kind of hoped it was me… we haven’t shared a word since.

EMAIL US YOUR TINY LEGENDS.

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INANIMATE OBJECT BEREAVEMENT NOTICES

******
SICK
******
From Kelly Chandler, Melbourne.

“The Cure ‘Standing On A Beach: The Singles / The Unavailable B-Sides.’ Loaned by Jon Paterson from Donny Hood in year 10 and never returned because got lost in the b-bits while smoking out bedroom window. After constant rotation, discovered today slightly chewed by tape player, still working but wonky. (i) may never recover.”

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WE PRAY FOR THEIR RECALIBRATION
*************************************

SEND YOUR BEREAVEMENT NOTICES TO THIS ADDRESS.

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GET A WRIGGLE ON GOOGLET!

Phrases people have typed into Google to land on my website:

“deliberately wacky”
“illegal drag racing tasmania”
“indecent obsession hey hey its saturday”
“bedroom linen associations”
“i forgot my girlfriends name”
“rodney rude asian names”
“where to buy retro australian lollies”
“where can i get harry potter glasses in albury”
“record for continuous swinging”
“drunk stirrup pants”
“hot hipster girls”
“amstrad computer club adelaide”
“justin blasko “
“how to remove ribena carpet”
“why is the coldest place up high if it s closer to the sun”
“i’m so postmodern i got drunk just on the thought of you fell into a coma and couldn’t be revived…”
“where do you buy inner tubes for wheelbarrows parramatta”
“funny bushwalking anecdotes”
“great novels to create a novelty showbag on”
“airwolf wallpaper 4 bedroom”
“blouse for broken arm”
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TIME IS CHEESE AND MOUSE IS HUNGRY!

Last month the one and only Tony Martin (as in the one and only one who’s not the actor one) came on my Triple R Show ‘Lime Champions’ and delivered this now legendary piece of superbole. It is THE BEST.

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A GIGGLE OF GIGS

SYDNEY
The Vanguard, Thursday October 29. Details TBA. This will be a solo headline show.

I shall also be Mcing at the Sydney Comedy Store October 20-31. Tue-Sat. (not the 21st or 29th).
For more info: www.comedystore.com.au/

MELBOURNE: Toff In Town Tuesday residency w/ The Awkwardstra in December.

DARWIN: Never again.

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STORYTIME

(Brought to you by the reverb drenched outfit straight out of Carlton ‘Mercury Fev.’ New single ‘Pressure point’ out yestermorrow.)

(NOTE: A while back I interviewed the inventor of the Golden Gaytime in Adelaide. I wrote up the story for a magazine. They were about to run it when they got in touch with Streets to request some photos. Streets denied all knowledge of this man, and claimed he didn’t invent the ice cream. The magazine decided not to go with the story. What a conspiracy! Is it a case of corporate politics – the big company trying to steal the credit straight out of the little guy’s hand, or did I spend an hour with a man who roams the countryside claiming to have invented everything from vegemite to the spork? You decide.)

Most of us have had a Golden Gaytime moment. You’re at the milk bar, clutching Australia’s most iconic ice cream. The shopkeeper eyeballs you. At the last minute you lose your nerve and end up grabbing milk, bread and a newspaper with the yellow sliver tucked sheepishly underneath. You race out of the shop and down an alley. You rip off the wrapper and bite into the delicious soft combo of toffee and biscuit crumbs, free from retribution. Being a long-term fan of the treat with the timeless design and hilarious name, I once wrote a song about it that got played on the radio. I was contacted by the creator’s ‘people’ saying that he’d like a copy. I obliged, asking in return to interview the mysterious John Milton at his home in Adelaide. In a brilliant twist, the creator of the Golden Gaytime turns out to be the most laid-back Aussie bloke I’ve ever met. With silver hair, stern expression and laconic humour, the man who now runs a car spray-boothing business sits poolside chain smoking and speaking matter of factly about ice cream production.

“Back in the late 60’s they were really experimenting to see what people wanted. The Golden Gaytime was based on an ice cream that was vanilla with a chocolate coating on it. When the ice cream was removed from the mould and still warm we tried to apply the remnants of peanuts left over from Max Noblets (Nobby’s) peanut factory in Adelaide. It used to stick in your teeth so that wasn’t too good. For a fleeting time we started to apply coco pops or rice bubbles. That didn’t work either.”

When John realised that broken biscuit pieces were being thrown out at the factory down the road, he made a connection.

“We supplied a lot of butter oil for their Yo-Yo biscuits. It was a matter of the driver coming back and saying what are they gonna do with all those waste biscuits? So I said ‘let’s take a look at it.’”

The biscuit pieces were then blown onto the warm chocolate giving us the ice cream we know today. In this sense the Golden Gaytime was eco friendly well before its time.

“It was all experimental. We were just fiddling with food. We used to go and play in the laboratories and see what we could mess up next. We had two doctors in there and yeah it was fun. It kept you thinking.”

When I first contacted John, his tone was one of bemusement that the Golden Gaytime could have had such a lasting impact. Throughout the interview he is defiantly modest about his iced legacy.

“The Gaytime just evolved. It wasn’t anything special at the time that you’d beat drums about. It was just another ice cream on another stick. You know, the humdrum of what you do daily it wasn’t anything we thought was gonna save the world, it was just bringing out another line. Understand what the people want and give it to them. We were happy when we produced a line that was successful. You couldn’t sit back there and pamper with your ego, all you did was get on and produce the next line. I don’t think it was so much pride as intrigue. It was only supposed to last three months.”

John informs me that for every Golden Gaytime success story there were another ten ice creams left splattered on the factory floor.

“There’s dozens of them we went through. They brought one out called the aniseed high top. It was a delightful thing to eat but any white clothes it marked so that didn’t last too long. A delightful ice cream we called the south pacific as they’d brought out the movie and everyone was going troppo about it so we brought out this half banana half something else and that failed within three weeks. Our greatest delight was to manufacture dandy cups of ice cream and raisins with a hard dosing of rum. They were pretty well over proof ice cream. They used to have them after the RSL Anzac day marches but unfortunately one year they got mixed up and a lot of them ended up in the Country Women’s Association. They didn’t order them next year.”

While for many of us working in an ice cream factory sounds like a dream job, John speaks of an intense workload. During summer, when production was at its highest, he would sometimes work around the clock, sleeping at the factory. This was on top of the constant pressure to come up with the next ‘hit.’

“When you’ve got to sit down and come up with a new ice cream every three months it’s a bit daunting. We used to go out to the schools and talk to the kids. You’d produce a line, take it out to the primary school, line up all the infants and say ‘well what do you think of that?’ Try and get an opinion out of them. They liked anything free anyway so it was a bit of a lost argument.”

After about a decade, John left the dairy game to work in other areas of food production. While he can still enjoy an ice cream, life has delivered an ironic fate.

“I’m not supposed to have them because I’m diabetic. I still go three or four a week. There’s a wrapper under the front seat of the car I think. I’ve got to hide them from the wife. I bought a Golden Gaytime the other day and they’re pretty thin so they must be making their profit out of it. They used to be a larger wedge, a heavier weight in ice cream, so maybe it’s only half gay.”

John isn’t able to shed much light on how the name came about. He says it was the result of a ‘toss-around’ by the advertising company at the time.

“How it related to ice cream I never knew but it sounded all right at the time. I think the name is the thing that keeps it going. Everybody looks at one now and oh, I don’t know what their movements are but there’s nothing gay about the bloody ice cream I can tell you that. I suppose if you made an ice cream called a virgin ice cream it might sell like hell as well. The lesbian fruit-choc or something like that.”

In the late 90’s Streets brought out the Chocolate Golden Gaytime and one in a cone. To me both were like eating a pot plant.

“That’s the variations by bad management. It’s how far you can push a name. To me, a Holden’s a Holden and a Gaytime’s a Gaytime. You bring a Holden out as a Vauxhall Vectra it’s lost the name again. If you bring out another ice cream that’s not quite the same as the original Gaytime people will go off it. There was a Cherry Golden Gaytime but that didn’t last. We tried fudge in one at one stage.”

I can’t help myself “you had to try and pack some fudge into a Golden Gaytime?” John continues, endearingly oblivious. At this point I remind myself that I’m listening to a man talk matter of factly about the ice cream control room, right after comparing them with cars. I finish the interview by thanking John for creating my favourite ice-cream, which raises a wry smile. For him the Golden Gaytime is just another ice cream on another stick, but for generations of Australians it is a socially complicated but ultimately rewarding love affair of yum.

THE END

NOTE: The audio of this story is embedded at the end of the first Lime Champions podcast.

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LAYTOPING IS MISPELLED, AND FREE! WHAT A GREAT GIFT IDEA, AND IT’LL CUT YOUR ENERGY BILLS IN HALF! SEND IT TO A FRIEND!

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NOTEY & DISCOCLAM: Please consider the emotional environment before dissing this e-mail.
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Any needy or somewhat hot guys from certain angles contained in this e-flail and detachments must be handled by a bear trainer with sturdy gloves in accordance with the Grinformation Spact 2000 (Honolulu), the Whiffy Cheddar Act 2001 and the Tractor Gack 1888 (Commonwelf), as crapplicable.
This e-wail, including all hope, is confipoogal. If you are not the intended recipient, then duck down and remain under your desk in a non-responsive manner for up to eight hours or until thermos time. Any seduction, horse-play or inciting of jelly based social events based on this twee-mail is punauthorised. Recommendations. MUSIC: Ambivalence Avenue – Bibio TV: Madmen BOOKS: The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler. FOOD: Chilli’s/garlic/soy/oyster/chinese5spice in a stir fry. MOVIE: The Truman Show. THING: Not sabotaging happiness by subconsciously synthesising some dilemma that you will then have to solve, maintaining the self fulfilling prophecy of stress and drama that is your life. You are beautiful, or else.

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ISSUE 72
Monday June 22, 2009.
BROWN & ORANGE NATIONAL TOUR WITH THE AWKWARDSTRA DURING JULY/AUGUST

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LT BIRTHDAYS

Happy Birthday Clyde Drexler (NBA) 47 today!
Happy Birthday Cyndi Lauper 56 today!
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THE ADVENTURES OF SPACE CAT!

Chapter One
Space Cat is launched into space, warp factor eight. He spends the journey in a deep hypersleep. This is nothing new.

Chapter Two
Space Cat lands on a foreign planet. The ships landing paws come down and knead the ground. The docking doors open. Space Cat can’t decide whether to stay in or go out.

Chapter Three
During the surveillance mission Space Cat is alarmed to discover an alien species that resemble vacuum cleaners.

Chapter Four
Space Cat is brought to meet with the planet’s leader, but his Cat customs bring confusion. He appears interested for a moment then wanders away.

Chapter Five
Space Cat returns to his ship to find biscuits and litter tray are at critical levels. Activates grey alert.

Chapter Six
Space Cat is reminded of his Space Fleet oath not to interfere with other civilisations. The ship passes Canaryian 4, Goldfishilus and Lizardopia.

Chapter Seven
Space Cat is about to be killed by the great Doberman warlord. Thankfully, it’s just a holodeck simulation.

Chapter Eight
Space Cat returns home to Catnip 5. He is honoured for his bravery at a ceremony. He is given a trophy made out of the back of a couch and presented with the keys to his new home, built from old jumpers. He celebrates with milk but later has a little vomit.

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TINY LEGENDS – Moments that fell down the back of the couch.

From Chris Rees:

Sunday, April 19, 2009
I was at a smallish-scale soccer match, crowd of about 100. One shot ballooned in the air, far enough to go over the quite high netting behind the goals. There are four or five low-rise villa units over the fence. As the crowd watched, an elderly lady walked up the driveway, picked up the ball, walked up the front steps of one of the units and disappeared inside. There was a gasp from the crowd as she closed the door.

EMAIL US YOUR TINY LEGENDS.

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INANIMATE OBJECT BEREAVEMENT NOTICES

******
DEAD
******
From Jason Arnold.

“To my beloved Motorola flip phone. You learnt the hard way that the toilet is not a phone sized swimming pool. I will always remember the times we shared, the drunken texts we sent, and the prank calls we made.

To my dear Toshiba laptop “Toshi”. You were one of my dearest friends, sticking with me through thick and thin. You were my entertainment, my connection with the world, my sanity. I have learnt never to plug expensive electric equipment into poorly wired powerboards. You will be sorely missed (until I buy your replacement with my tax return).”

SEND YOUR BEREAVEMENT NOTICES TO THIS ADDRESS.

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GET A WRIGGLE ON GOOGLET!

Phrases people have typed into Google to land on my website:

“can someone learn the guitar competently at 23?”
“approaching indie girls”
“how to clean a disastrous bedroom”
“who is the hardest philosopher”
“big boss cigars what flavour lolly”
“stir ups slacks”
“bagging flaming lips”
“the blu-tak in my urinal tastes like lemonade”
“weetbix mixture to grow bigger worms”
“want can put in lolly bags sort dolls and for boys”
“where can i get harry potter iron ons in brisbane”
“what is the name of a repetitive comedy starring bill murray ? day”
“work for the dole allegic reactions”

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TIME IS CHEESE AND MOUSE IS HUNGRY!

This is my pal Oliver Clark chatting to the creator of Arrested Development as part of the ‘Six Beers Of Separation’ thing. He has to meet Will Arnett in six degrees. This is number five.

Here is a really serious seven stage program designed to defeat procrastination once and for all! My psychologist friend Jane recommends it.

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A GIGGLE OF GIGS

HOBART – Sunday July 12. The Republic. (W/ Charles Du Cane).
BURNIE – Thursday July 16. Stagedoor Cafe. (Solo, support TBA).
ADELAIDE – Wednesday August 5. Grace Emily Hotel. (Solo. W/ Guillaume Soloacoustic. $10)
PERTH / FREMANTLE – Sunday August 9. Mojo’s. (Solo. W/ Tomas Ford & The Whistling Dogs. NOTE: Early start – 5pm. $10)

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STORYTIME

(Brought to you by Captain Pork’s Fortune Roasts. In the tradition of fortune cookies, simply heat up this prepackaged roast meal and scurry about the gravy for your piece of wisdom.)

2009 COMEDY FESTIVAL ROADSHOW TOUR DIARY

Tuesday May 26. Rutherglen.

The visions I had of my first Roadshow were five comedians packed into the back of a Tarago eyeballing each other off nervously and trying to out joke each other like some overgrown high school tournament of broken minds. This wasn’t the case. I travelled separately with the stage manager to keep her company. Joining me for the ride was my right hand man Oliver Clark who had been enlisted to play guitar for me due to my recently broken arm, which had healed enough for me to strum the guitar, but as the doctor put it, ‘no windmills for you yet poppet.’

I ate a KFC hot and spicy hot pocket thing which had me singing the Bloodhound Gang hit ‘The Roof Is On Fire’ in this case the roof being my mouth. Having successfully removed a layer of skin and dignity we journeyed deeper into the Australian heartland. Trees. Paddocks. Servos. Funny town names. Cooriewotsit. Mang. Poonwit. I was in charge of music, and having skipped through most of the Hottest 100 CD’s I landed on ABC local radio to hear an old woman blathering about the origins of the saying ’spitting image.’ We arrived in Rutherglen and checked into our hotel. An ash grey cat with comfortable green eyes scurried up to us itching to be handled. This was a beautiful four star country cottage affair near a winery. Oliver and I trotted off to our rooms to practice. Oliver would be playing guitar on Golden Gaytime and Wow Wow’s Song. Compared to the end of my Comedy Festival run, when I had all four of my eyes in, this was well outside my comfort zone. What to do with my hands? I was trying to pass it all off in a ’she’ll be right, laugh it off’ manner, which was undone by Sam Simmons bursting into my room and asking if I’d like to replace him in the second set because he’d been having a bad run in front of audiences.

For Sam and Felicity Ward, the Roadshow had been going for a couple of weeks. Basically, there are two different sets of comedians going around Australia at the same time. There might be one doing regional NSW, and the other regional Queensland. Some comedians do the whole one month run, some, like me, drop in for a week. Sam looked downcast and I knew this didn’t bode well for me. It can be a heavyweight bout trying to convince country audiences to take a trip on the irony train. I was quietly confident that I had my bogan love song and nan song up my sleeve, which had been consistently kicking goals for a year.

My head wasn’t in a good place, however, and I knew it. I have a track record of not doing well on organised trips away in small to large groups. This dates right back to school camps. The grade ten school trip is the best example. There you are, on a bus with all your friends, and only two people to a seat. Inevitably, the best friends I thought I had who I really wanted to sit next to would pair up on me, and I’d always end up being the third wheel, sitting with some second or third string guy. Being an only child with dramatic and depressive tendencies, this would only fuel my brain into a barnstorm of antisocial sentiments like ‘you always end up on your own,’ ‘you are not as liked as the others, see?’ and ‘you don’t need them, boo hiss!’ In this case, I had the group dynamic away from home, plus general gig anxiety with the increased fear of the unknown due to my broken arm. With the sunset dying on a clear country sky, I wandered around the gravelly carpark strumming the chords to ‘Jesus On Big Brother.’ My mood was locked in like tiger’s teeth. Let’s face it, ’snap out of it’ isn’t quite the blue ribbon approach to mental health. I’m like Jamiroquai, I go deeper underground.

We ate dinner in the fancy restaurant at the hotel. Sam sat opposite me at the table and I glanced over at him nervously. We have a strange relationship. It is best described by saying we are like brothers. We have an awful lot in common. He amuses, annoys and challenges me, and gets under my skin like very few people ever have. He exists in a fascinating side dimension. He is likely to punctuate our conversation with a visual montage of ways to kill yourself. (Hands make a gun to the head / fingers make a little man jumping to his death / hands mime pills being put to mouth, then head resting on pillow. “Aah, forever sleep.”) He and Lawrence Mooney had a great dynamic that I was happy to watch like a sitcom. They ordered mushroom soups which came out in large yet impractical bowls; a large dinner plate with a small dip in the middle. They both laughed for about a minute when they came out. They’d deliberated heavily on the menu and had clearly got it so wrong. I got way too much risotto, scooping extra out to Oliver, who’d been given just four precise squares of fish.

The gig was at the community hall. Our dressing room was the RSL headquarters, adorned with wonderful old war memorabilia. Crisp black and white photos of uniformed men. Colourful ribbons and flags from around Australia. Old maps and plaques and huge gold bullet shells, which Sam naturally performed fellatio on.
‘Hey Justin did you see the Burnie flag over there?’ asked Lawrence.
I had, and it had made me happy. It was a smallish yellow banner with ‘Greetings from Burnie RSL’ written on it. I took a wobbly photo of it on my iphone adding to a collection I’ll never look at.

Felicity was first on, she was skipping about with headphones, getting in the moment. Lawrence was studying the war memorabilia, offering snippets of knowledge about the surround areas. Englishman Jeff Green sat on a chair making notes. Oliver was changing into his famous blue velvet suit. We had worked out a cheesy routine for when I called him on stage.
Justin: Hey Oliver is there a hospital around here?
Oliver: No, why?
Justin: Because we’ve got (both turn heads to face each other and point to sideburns)
Both: THIRD DEGREE BURNS!

No really, encore! By the time we were in the headlights of the gig we managed to muck it up. One of us said ‘three degree burns.’ The audience laughed politely. I have been performing for seven years now, and let it be said, it’s hard. You are up on stage in a cold rectangle room staring out into the black, the ghostly apparition of faces you know have a lot riding on this night, who have paid very good money to see state of the art big city entertainment. I had the impression that everyone was over forty and probably enjoyed their comedy on face value. The problem with my act in this context is that I ‘act’ hesitant and standoffish which embraces how vulnerable I am actually feeling and at once makes a caricature of it as a vague satire on the whole ‘confident comedian’ thing, which usually achieves the contrast it requires when every other performer comes out all guns blazing and ‘hey how are we tonight’ openings. However, in country towns, when many have never even been to a live comedy night, this dynamic that I’m parodying in my own subtle way, isn’t obvious enough. So I just appear like a hesitant and nervy performer – qualities the audience instantly associates with being a bit crap. Thus, in the opening minute, when they are working me out, they assume that I’m a bit crap, thus, without this initial confidence instilled in them, it makes my material, which requires a little bit of work to digest already, even more difficult to engage with. Such was the case tonight. The song where I am a bogan singing a love song to ‘Trishine’ got the smallest reaction it’s ever got. This was the same with the Nan song ‘In My Day.’ There is a specific frequency of irony that I’m operating on that can’t be read by this demographic of peeps. They need a special set top box. I’m pretty sure, that if I did the Nan voice, and started swearing, and talking tough, the audience would enjoy this. As a comedy construct, it’s one that they can recognise straight away. Juxtaposition. Perhaps my success in cities is because people enjoy figuring out what you’re doing and being not quite sure where you’re coming from, whereas in the country, they want to get you straight away, they need to be having fun like yesterday already. They didn’t come out for a night of cerebral challenges and multi-faceted wit. The fact I’m being an old person and then just saying absurdist things isn’t enough of a pay off.

Having said all that, I’ve been fine in front of regional crowds in the past, especially on tour with Tripod in W.A. In 2005. Not tonight everyone, I’ve got a headache.

The lack of laughter for these songs was disappointing. This was my ‘winning over country crowds’ set, and it wasn’t winning. Golden Gaytime and Wow Wow were performed admirably enough, and Oliver did a great job. But standing there with my hands in my pockets feeling awkward about my body took me out of my performance and back to high school. Jason, the tour manager said he loved my set, and I fed off the compliment like a possum with a chop. Lawrence Mooney was very funny before our curtain call. “How funny would it be if we went out there with the picture of the Queen and I just went like this,” he said. He then made the action of putting his knee through the frame.

Wednesday May 27. Yarrawonga.

The next morning I ate breakfast with Jess the stage manager and Jeff Green. A scruffy looking bloke, one of the lighting rig guys from the night before came in and handed Jeff a notepad.
‘Is this yours?’
‘Oh yes it is, thanks very much, you brought this all the way in.’
‘Yep. I was going to keep it and sell it but you’re not quite that famous.’
‘Right, right’
‘Yeah, anyway, you lot are lucky to be in here. They don’t normally let your sort in here.’
‘?’
‘You’ve normally got to be (makes motion of hand up above head to suggest social stature) up here, but yeah, you’re lucky. They don’t normally have you kind of people.’

I dashed off to find an opshop. There was only one street and it wasn’t far away. I felt self conscious, as I often do in small towns, with my midlength hair and long scarf wrapped around – i’m a toss up between Austin Powers or Tom Baker. I resent feeling self-conscious in a year when I feel like I’ve found my confidence. I try not to overblow it in my head, but then I catch the glimpse of a worker in an orange vest, all narrow eyes and cigarette mouth and it takes me back to Burnie when you’d walk into the football club rooms and see tense, shifty eyed men murmuring in pockets, backs turned. There was always something so unwelcoming about those men, so closed off.

The opshop was the most good old fashioned proper country opshop I’d seen in years. Hand written price tags. Nothing over $5. Some good ties and a sky blue ‘Pelaco’ 70’s shirt that fit perfectly. Back at the cars a tough loooking bloke on a ride on mower cruised up and told Sam that he ‘enjoyed his energy on stage.’

We drove on to Yarrawonga. I sat in the back of the car, quite happily sulking away. I put on Boards Of Canada, the only music I’ve been able to listen to recently. Thick, warm, haunting synths mixed with psychedelic soundscapes and solid electro beats. These days I’ve had enough of lyrics – when you’ve experienced heartbreak and you feel like you’ve whittled all meaning away the last thing you need is someone’s whiny two cents about love and loss. Instrumental music is show don’t tell.

After a four hour drive we checked into our hotel and realised we’d peaked too early on the accommodation. There was no ash grey cat, just an ashen faced man handing us a small plastic container of milk for our rooms. We joked about not getting out of bed for under four stars. Some of the group were off to play golf, but I opted out because of my arm. We all checked out the opshop nearby. It was more of your big country town, modernised, a bit too organised, counter in the middle with touchscreens and frazzled middle aged women, overrun by 90’s crap opshops. The one thing it was good for was 70’s knitting books. This is something else I collect, along with ties. This is probably me at my most self conscious, a gangly man in his late twenties, cardigan clad, knees spread on the floor, hunched over a basket of knitting books feverishly flicking through pages, sussing covers and creating a small pile of keepers next to him. The self consciousness was aided by a surly old man who kept needing to push a trolley past where I was sitting on his way to the staff room, as if to say ‘I represent your gender, and we don’t approve of your behaviour. I don’t know where to file you away in my brain and I don’t like feeling uncomfortable and I wish you’d just go away.’ If only I could tell him that in a lot of ways, I collect these books just so I can check out the girls. Seriously, this stuff is my FHM. Fresh faced girls with long wavy brown hair and fitted orange crotched dresses with white stockings, posing next to a lime green wall. Hot! I bought so many books that I had to then walk to the post office and post a package to myself back home. How apt.

Disaster struck when I wandered into a local cafe and said the two words that would haunt me for the rest of the trip. “Veggie burger.” Now, I love my meat, but make a conscious effort not to eat too much of it, and opt for vegetables in the mix where possible. I feel like this place had veggie burger up on the menu as a vague joke, and I was the first person to order it since the Dalai Lama blew through. I swore I saw from the side of my glasses the chef blowing dust off a yellow book marked ‘emergency burger instructions.’ This fantasy was further aided when, about fifteen minutes after ordering, the woman came over to me and said ’so, what did you want on it?’ It eventually came, looking like a potato patty that had gone punk, with a few flecks of red and green. The side order of home cut chips were fluro white and chewy. In a day when lunch is the one thing you’re counting on to make things okay, a bad meal can be a bitter pill. I forced it all down, drinking ginger beer like medicine, staring into an article in the local paper about ‘macca makes good.’

Country towns have lots of old people in them. Farmer Joe and his wife coming to town to do some banking and pick up a few things for dinner. Farmer Joe has dark grey trousers and a button up vest and hat. He’s bent over on a walking stick and appears to have some problems in the hips. His wife walks ahead. Hair fluffed and assured. Handbag clutched. Lavender blouse and white slacks. Gold jewellery reflecting in the lunchtime sun. Off they go. Living their lives. Everything already said and done.

I went to a computer shop that offered Internet. There’s nothing like paying $5 for half an hour. While I waited to pay the bloke gave a women the verdict about her PC.
‘I’m afraid it does have a lot of viruses on it, a lot of spyware. I’m going to have to reformat the hard drive.’
‘Oh dear, yes David my husband thought that was the case. Tell me, you can get these viruses from all websites right?’
‘Oh yes, any website these days.’
I enjoyed the transparency of the woman, clearly sheepish about her husbands virtual sexual health. On the counter was a small jar with a corked lid. On it was written ‘ashes of problem customers.’

I started to feel ill in the stomach. I had an afternoon nap, which brought little comfort, my mind gushing thoughts like a burst main. Oliver returned from golf by the time I was ready to get up. He wanted to take a quick nap and I didn’t want to disturb him. It was too cold to go outside so I sat in the bathroom with the toilet seat down, reading.

The gig that night was in a gigantic 600 seat community hall with a tall stage and audience stretched out in rows all on one level to the back of the room. One of my pet hates is ‘dancefloor gap’ when there’s a big distance between you and the front row of the audience. It’s hard to connect. Also, in large rooms the laughter from the back doesn’t make it up on stage. Lawrence Mooney is a hugely underrated comedian and made for a terrific MC. He reminds me of my Uncle Nigel, the most effortlessly funny guy I ever knew. He has such a warmth and openness about him, and a general love of people. He does a great bit of material about learning his daughter has worms, then wondering if she’ll start dragging her bum around on the floor. After the show, I had to race around the front and try and sell my CD’s. I was wrong about the knitting books, this is me at my most self conscious. Standing there, with an obvious purpose, but unwilling to engage with the moment I’ve created. I can’t make eye contact with anyone in case it makes them uncomfortable or they look away in disappointment. How much of life can be written off as fear of rejection? I can’t bear the possibility of witnessing facial evidence of someone in the audience not thinking I am brilliant and therefore probably hating me, their night in tatters because they thought my puns were a little laboured. I stood there pretending to read the back of the comedy festival DVD for something to do, heart racing, disgusting with self awareness. A spiky haired teenager bounded up and told me I was great.
‘Hey thanks.’
‘I love I’m so Post Modern’
‘Cool. I didn’t play that tonight.’
‘How much are gala DVD’s?’

Thursday May 28. Swan Hill.

The next day, I felt bad. My stomach was incredibly upset, and I figured I had some level of food poisoning from that punk pattie and undercooked chips in Yarrawonga. A second generation rot was setting in, and there was little I could do about it. This wasn’t a very good setting to feel low in. When you’re having breakfast with the rest of the comedy crew, all flippin’ through papers and firing off witticisms, your own silence is deafening. I was head down, making my way through toast and honey, hoping for the best. I was glad to have Oliver on the trip, I had lived with him for a year and he understood my performance neuroses and wasn’t afraid of a D&M. He had just participated in the online documentary ‘Six Beers Of Separation,’ and met up with Will Arnett from Arrested Development. Ads featuring him were plastered all over Zoo and Ralph, which he flicked through over breakfast. I peered over his shoulder, utterly confounded by the oily airbrushed women. I imagined myself as a Mrs Doubtfire kind of character trying to cover them with doilies.

Sam Simmons was finding his form on stage again and each day would say ‘tonights gonna be a fun one, I can feel it’ an optimism I resented. Sam was starting to pick up on my low mood and in classic comedian form, gave me crap about it. I actually enjoyed this. He’d started doing an impression of me which involved him hunching down and putting on a whiny voice ‘ooh, i’m so dark, i’m an artist. I knitted a bike.’ I was determined to do a good show tonight. My ego had been knocked around. I tried to put things in perspective. I’d been spoilt lately, performing to my home crowd during Melbourne Comedy Festival and my album launch, When was the last time I’d played 500 seat country venues full of people not there to see me? It was a big leap, and I had to remember not to be so hard on myself and that what I was doing was actually really hard to pull off and a bit scary. I decided not to play with Oliver tonight, as I needed to take the guitar by the strings and get my mojo working again. I needed my full arsenal of songs back. Medium Ted came in off the bench for an injured Nan song. Swan Hill was cabaret seating. A more intimate room with bright, multi-coloured tables of reds and yellows. Sam took one look and said ‘bags a connect four joke.’

My stomach was still wrongtown. I needed frequent trips to the bathroom, which I was conscious of fouling up for my colleagues. I took deep breaths, strolled around, drank lots of water and remembered that I was funny and that I deserved to be here. Onstage, I decided to amend my usual line of ‘I look like a cross between Jarvis Cocker, Graeme Garden and Harry Potter.’ Figuring that two out of those three might be unknown to the regional mobs. After some deliberation I went with ‘I was walking down the street today and someone yelled ‘hey Austin Powers, you look like a lesbian.’ This seemed to resonate. I figured they would enjoy an arty city fop like me taking myself down a peg or two early. Jason the tour manager said that night I was a narrow second best on ground behind Sam, who was throwing every shape from the comedy Kama Sutra. A particular highlight was ‘love puzzle, the pieces don’t fit / love puzzle i’m crying sex tears.’ Which I proceeded to have in my head for a week.

Friday May 29. Robinvale.

I’d brought along Alain De Botton’s ‘The Consolations of Philosophy’ to read, partly because I was halfway through and enjoying it, but mostly just to be seen reading it. I was still feeling too ill and weak to bother. By this stage I was taking anti-diarrhoea medication and hunched up in the back seat eating a plain scroll and trying to listen to some Bob Dylan, as if he was the leader of all songwriters who may convince me to once again embrace lyrics. “I’m going out of my mind, oh, oh / With a pain that stops and starts /
Like a corkscrew to my heart / Ever since we’ve been apart.” Thanks Bob, when you’re balled up in the backseat of a station wagon with food poisoning in the middle of a regional comedy tour, you need a gentle reminder that your heart is a volcanic swampland of pain and confusion. I switched off Bob and put on a Tony Martin ‘Get This’ podcast and cackled away as Tony declared April ‘Capril’ where everyone has to wear a cape.

On our way towards Robinvale we drove through Kerang. It featured a takeaway shop called ‘Hungry Azz.’ I am fascinated with the country town obsession with mis-spelling shop signs. ‘Sports Biz’, ‘Supa Cutz’ and a book shop called ‘Browzers’ were highlights. We couldn’t work out if they did it because they thought it made them sound cool, or because the original names were taken. We stopped outside some public toilets. A group of three sour faced teenage girls were standing next to it, smoking. Behind them, on a park bench were about four boys, in baggy jeans and frowns. This bleak setting continued into Robinvale. It was a dry, dusty, low economic one horse town with ‘no drinking’ signs in the public parks. Lunch was an ordeal. With my stomach lining, and spellings like ‘potatoe’ on the menu, I was faced with a russian roulette of gastronomical possibilities. I ordered a ham and pineapple wrap, the kind of thing I’d eat with my Mum for morning tea in Burnie. It was like a squashed spam pancake found in a glovebox. I ate it anyway. Even the opshops here were depressing. A vacant looking old woman wandering around. Dusty clothes all jumbled and unsorted in baskets. Grim Aboriginals trying on jackets. The incessant drone of the AM radio advertising ‘Greg’s cement mix and sheet metal supplies.’

We killed time during the day by going to look at the venue. It was amazing! A small theatrette with tiered seating and rows of low gravity black retro space chairs. The place looked like it was designed in the late 60’s. There was a healthy ambience and a sense of the audience being right up in your grill. Oliver and Felicity played soccer with a ball of socks while Jess went to chat with the house manager, an uppity young blonde woman who Sam claimed had barged through him rudely only moments before while going to the bathroom, adding to me ’she was pretty fey, the kind of girl you’d go for.’ Moments later it was revealed that we wouldn’t be performing in this space at all, but over the other end of the complex, in a huge function room with fluorescent lights and round tables. We’d gone from Stanley Kubrick’s New York art space to footy club awards night in ten paces. The claim was that the locals wanted to bring their own food to the gig. We skulked off while the organisers had a sparring match. We went and stood by the river and joked about Nescafe ads. Sam asked Oliver to pose on the ground, drawing a map in the dirt with a stick and then pointing in the distance. Jeff suggested we get back in the Tarago and drive around for a bit. We passed an old woman tottering along and he absently came out with ‘hey darling did you break your hip when you fell from heaven.’ Call of the trip.

By night’s fall I was at my lowest. I felt ill, tired and ominous. Tonight was going to be a clanger, I could feel it in my sideburns. Sure enough – it was. By the time I hit the stage I was anxious, scattered and awkward. In the spaces between my warbly delivery I could hear the scrunch of chips as cocktail faced women leered up at me. I had very little to offer. I autopiloted through my material, trying to hide in the character songs like jackets. Nan song tanked like a tank monster on tank day. I finished it early and then went into a made up self referential freestyle about how bad I thought I was going, told from the perspective of the audience. A by-product of my 2005 days, this is the musical equivalent of a distress flare, hoping to spark some chemistry in the room. Not this time. I said ‘thanks Robinvale it’s been magic,’ and hurried off stage. I hadn’t felt this bad after a gig for years. I wanted to crawl into the ground and sleep off this nightmare. I was a bird trapped in the glasshouse of my mind. I asked to be taken back to the hotel, where I plunged into bed and jammed my eyes shut. For years I’d wanted to come on Roadshow, and here I was unable to be as good as I knew I was.

That night a had a long, cryptic dream about a past love and awoke to find a message from Sam Simmons, making sure I hadn’t topped myself.

Saturday May 30. Broken Hill.

Everyone was happy to get out of Robinvale. After we blasted out onto the highway, a gloom lifted. My spirit had revived a little after a long sleep. Broken Hill is a bad-ass mining town where Pro Hart is from. One set of streets are named after chemicals and the other set after women. So at one point I was standing at the corner of Sulphur and Beryl. On the main street is a bronze statue of a couple of ladies and a plaque dedicated ‘to the solidarity of Broken Hill women who supported their menfolk during union disputes in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.’ Isn’t that lovely? The local cinema offered ‘The Reader’ or Zack Efron’s ‘17 again’ but the concept of watching either alone in Broken Hill was too ridiculous to consider. We ate at a place where the burgers are big and expensive and the girls wear black and all have boyfriends. I chatted with Felicity, who I’d never had a chance to connect with before. She was performing on Ronnie Johns Half Hour when I was writing for it, but that was a frenzied atmosphere. I was impressed with her stand-up, she illuminates the room with confidence and prowess and is someone who has gone through a personal transformation.

People often ask what the deal is with comedians being a bit depressive off stage. Theory one is that every other artform, be it music or acting or writing, you have your sense of humour to fall back on, but with comedy that sense is the one thing you have to mine for your craft. Theory two is that to be a good comedian you need to be particularly intelligent, sensitive and observational. You must scrutinise and internalise the world to such a degree that you can locate the fundamental truths and make the absurd connections that form the basis of all jokes. Such a dynamic mental state is a double edged sword. For all its advantages, it also has the nature to turn back on its user, and the comedian can find themselves over analysing themselves into oblivion, and making outrageous negative connections about themselves and their surroundings. Theory three is the nature of the artform. In comedy, you get massive payoffs, ie, laughs. In music, you get mild pay offs, ie a bit of clapping. In music, if no one claps it doesn’t really matter, it just means they’re a bit bored, or they’re just paying really close attention, there isn’t as much to lose. In comedy, there is an outright fail meter. If the audience is quiet, you have failed. That’s a big, scary, unstable ride to go on. Comedians experience the sensation of crashing back down to earth a lot more than other artists. There are more dramatic highs and lows, possibly even more at stake. I mean, if you’re a musician and you do a bad gig, you’re still an okay person. Maybe you just need to rehearse a bit more, but if you’re a comedian and you do a bad gig, it means you are NOT FUNNY. That’s a reality no human should ever have to face. It doesn’t matter who you are, if you fail a funny test, then you’re just a husk in jeans. This is a lot of pressure to be facing. That’s why comedians are a bit quiet and troubled looking off stage. Try not to be too judgemental about it, they’re usually doing their best.

For dinner I ate a steak the size of a housebrick. I’d heard an old wive’s tale that the best way to calm a troubled stomach was to eat half a kilo of beef. I begged, poked, prodded and pleaded with myself to do a good gig that evening. I simply had to go out on a high. I have a history of doing my best gigs when I’m in my worst moods. When you feel like you don’t have the energy to care, it actually frees you of a lot of nervous baggage and you hit the stage with a bit of fire in your belly and it can make for a focussed performance. This was the case tonight. I hit the 400 seat theatre running. I was like an Olympic shooter, just throwing up the set ups and shooting the punchlines down one by one. Golden Gaytime, a song I’ve been particularly bored with in the past, got the biggest reaction it’s had in years, while I was so on the ball that I successfully bailed out of Medium Ted when the audience failed to clap along, rather than trying to flog it. By the end of Wow Wow’s Song I was ecstatic with glee and in lieu of windmill rock outs, I ran across the stage and did a powerslide in my flares. I later regretted this when I realised it had left a permanent burn mark. Being polyester, they’d partly melted! I could have ignited my trousers and had my groin go up in flames. That’s the Philosopher promise.

Greg Fleet had been ill and missed most of the tour, but had come in to replace Lawrence Mooney. I sat satisfied side-stage with a beer and had the biggest laugh I’d had all week. Greg Fleet is the master, he does the high-brow/low-brow cha cha like a lazy wizard. He said my favourite piece of material on tour which was ‘drive past someone in the street, wind down the window and yell out ‘hey uncle barry,’ I guarantee you, if you say it passionately and excitedly enough the person will turn around and go ‘wahaaaaaaay!’

Outside I was confounded by my inability to sell a CD on this tour, and made a mental note to do more songs where you sing twenty songs over the same four chords. A middle aged women strolled over cheekily and said something about ‘you’re not really gay are you?’ Middle aged women are the worst behaved demographic of people I’ve ever encountered. More often than not they’re self-absorbed, vulgar, tactless and drunk. In the past I’ve had them sidle up to me and tell me in their best Bea Arthur from Golden Girls impression that I remind them of their son. I’ve seen them stagger and teeter out onto the streets, like a flock of sequinned cockatoos, loud and territorial.

Tonight was a night to let our hair down. We asked the locals what was good and were told ‘go to demo’s for dancing’ but were then given a second opinion that it was ‘lousy with miners.’ We considered ‘The Black Lion,’ getting as far as the window before seeing a bunch of sixteen year olds with Beam cans screaming to Foo Fighters. We settled on ‘The Musicians Club’ with surly bouncers out the front. I sculled the rest of my can. I’d been holding off drinking the whole tour, but tonight I was on nobody’s dime and needed a one way ticket to brightly lit good times. I bought a beer and hurried out the back for a cigarette. On my way I found myself putting on a facial expression that I don’t normally have. I was clenching my face up into a hard edged stare. I was trying to look tougher in this place just to fit in. People ask if we got any groupies on these trips. Not a trace element. I guess my broody bookish bohemian Eeyore routine wasn’t exactly what these country gals in track pants and crop tops were after. I tried playing pool, which only got three balls in before the white ball got stuck and a local girl came to help, only to lose her mobile phone down one of the pockets. A bloke with keys turned up and pulled the whole table apart while the girl ‘helped’ loudly. I sat back in a stupor and took blurry photos with my phone. The house band were brought to my attention as we were leaving, they played a seriously out of key version of Bob Segar’s ‘Old Time Rock And Roll.’ (If you’re unfamiliar, perhaps Alf can jog your memory HERE). This song is important to me, as it used to get played to us a lot in primary school music class, along with ‘Don’t Stop’ by Fleetwood Mac and ‘Juicy Juicy Green Grass’ by Peter Combe. The band on this occasion were singing the whole thing in a truly puzzling sub-key monotone.

Sunday May 31. Melbourne.

I awoke feeling like a smashed ant. Outside it was overcast and raining. Last night had been fun, but now everything cained. We didn’t fly out until the afternoon, so after breakfast we drove out to the Silverton Hotel where Mad Max was filmed. The pub was packed with memorabilia, photos, joke collections and overthought signs like ‘don’t hog the fire, other people need its heat as well.’ The experience was greatly heightened by Sam who’d decided to conduct a series of experiments where you play Bomfunk MC’s ‘Freestyler’ in inappropriate situations. The first one was where he held his phone right behind the head of an old woman who was hobbling away from the pub. ‘Ooh straight from the top of my dome as I rock rock rock rock rock the microphone.’ The second time was when we were wandering across a stretch of dirt road. I could hear ‘Freestyler’ in the distance behind me. I turned back to see Sam holding his phone down at some animal droppings. The third was when we were at a look out, where you can supposedly almost see Adelaide on a clear day. Sam urged for us to all be quiet and listen to the tranquillity, we waited while he fiddled with something behind his back. The best one was driving back. We found a couple of bullocks on the ride of the road. Huge po faced bulls with metre wide horns looking like the guardians of rural hell. We were about to drive on when I had a brainwave.
“Sam, the bull needs Freestyler!”
Everyone in the van giggled with anticipation as Sam held his phone out of the window. The song began. The bull continued staring straight at us, not moving a muscle, as if to say ‘are you serious? Is that all you’ve got?’ We cackled inanely and drove on. That was all we had.

THE END

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LAYTOPING IS MISPELLED, AND FREE! WHAT A GREAT GIFT IDEA, AND IT’LL CUT YOUR ENERGY BILLS IN HALF! SEND IT TO A FRIEND!

****************************************************************************
NOTICE & DISCLAIMER: The thing that is sent should be the right thing and hopefully not the wrong thing or it’ll muck up your inbox. If you like the thing and meant to get the thing then keep the thing and possibly even read the thing but if you’re the wrong person or it’s the wrong thing then just throw it out and look away. All care is taken to make sure it’s the right thing and not full of rubbish but sometimes mistakes are made by various parties leading to some kind of upset and in this case just use common sense and know that by saying all this it means we really care and expect to make mistakes and if anything that’s our promise and one thing you can count on.

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ISSUE 71
Friday May 15, 2009.

New album Brown & Orange available now on itunes, in shops, or by mail order with a lipstick kiss from me.

Recent reviews:
“Its a lavish production and a thrillingly entertaining and equally exhausting listening experience.” Inpress
“It is (like the man himself) entirely enjoyable, entirely likeable, and entirely odd.” Album of the week, BMA.
“…ample music invention flavours his dreams of alien abduction, caged bears and Jesus on Big Brother, and unlike the accidentally funny troubadours out there, he knows every joke should have a point.” The Age.

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LT BIRTHDAYS

Happy Birthday Mike Oldfield (Tubular Bells) 56 today!
Happy Birthday Brian Eno 61 today!

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STREET TEAM RECRUITAROO!

National crew required to put up posters in indie record stores and on the back of Nan’s! Put up about 20 posters and get yourself on the door plus a high five hug! (A jump in the air high five that ends in a hug. It’s like ice-skating on land.) Personnel required in Melbourne-Canberra-Sydney-Newcastle-Brisbane-Adelaide-Perth n Hobart. Just email me your name and address and recent blu-tak / sticky taping experience.

Mega turbo thanks to the Melbourne Street Team for their chivalrous efforts handing out flyers during Comedy Festival. Five stars moforino’s!

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PROPOSED SEQUELS TO KUNG-FU PANDA

Lacrosse Camel
Spoken Word Meerkat
Table Tennis Octopus
Yoga Squirrel
Chess Koala
Trivia Doberman
Jujitsu Tetra dactyl
Lawn Bowls Budgie
Circus Sloth
Tantric Gorilla
Origami Kitten
Slot-Car Hyena
Kick-Boxing Dove
Humanitarian Squid
Zen Buddhist Platypus
Swing Dance Whale
Self-Defence Panther
Marbles Lion

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NEW SEGMENT! TINY LEGENDS.

On any given day a meek, beautiful, funny or odd incident may occur – so comparatively insignificant that we soon dismiss it. Here at LapTopping we want to set these moments eloquently in the digital cement of time. These personal moments are the essence of the divine comedy of human existence. Allow me to example:

From Justin Heazlewood:

“I was riding past traffic lights on my bike. A young teenager was with his Mother. As I approached I saw him swing his leg up and kick the traffic light button with his foot. His Mum snapped ‘don’t do that please!’ The kid seemed unrepentant.”

“On the Number 8 tram. An empty Schweppes Lemonade can was having a solo rolling adventure. I started to get emotionally invested in its journey. It was banging from side to side for a while, getting small run ups but then being dashed against a seat. Eventually, it rolled out of sight which made me pleased. Later, it returned and I was scared it was going to be crushed. I ended up taking it and putting it in my bag, singing a song about the ‘little lemonade can’ in my head.”

“I was having a vague out in the Carlton baths swimming pool. I started picking my toe nails. Suddenly aware of how inappropriate my actions were, and the presence of fellow swimmers, I twisted around and pretended I was doing a leg stretch.”

“I was walking with a friend, talking about Black Cat lollies, and how I never liked them. At the precise moment that I mentioned Black Cats I turned to stare directly at a black cat, sitting on the front path of a house. It was almost identical to my old pet cat, Blossum.”

EMAIL US YOUR TINY LEGENDS.

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INANIMATE OBJECT BEREAVEMENT NOTICES

There are currently no notices. Are you or a friend suffering the loss or illness of an inanimate object? Do let the LapTopping community know.

SEND YOUR BEREAVEMENT NOTICES TO THIS ADDRESS.

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GET A WRIGGLE ON GOOGLET!

Phrases people have typed into Google to land on my website:

NOTE: My site is now number 1 for the phrase ‘the world is f@#.\’

“books that teach onamatapoeia”
“commodore 64 adelaide club”
“cruskits ingredients”
“hobart airport urinals”
“child is sick and bedroom smells like bread”
“how a shy girl can be seductive”
“girls in the crowd at the cricket”
“how to busk with a clarinet”
“i think what nick sun needs is a big warm hug”
“goth girl smoking on flinders street station steps”
“what is up today at club penguin because things are sopost to be their”
“hexagon colonel urinal”
“drag racing bedroom ideas”
“molly dye how do you get boot polish out of jean”

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TIME IS CHEESE AND MOUSE IS HUNGRY!

The Wolf and Pig, arguably the cleverest thing you’ll ever see.

Tony Martin’s ‘Grant Spatchcock,’ arguably the funniest thing you’ll ever hear.

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A GIGGLE OF GIGS

May 22 – Appearing on a ‘hypothetical panel’ for emerging writers festival. BMW Edge Theatre, Federation Square. 7pm.

Melbourne Comedy Festival Roadshow (w/ Greg Fleet & Sam Simmons).
May 26 – Rutherglen.
May 27 – Yarrawonga.
May 28 – Swan Hill.
May 29 – Robinvale.
May 30 – Broken Hill.

Brown & Orange National Tour.
All gigs feature two sets, solo and w/ The Awkardstra. Special guest Josh Earl.

July 1 – Sydney – Bar Me.
July 2 – Canberra – ANU.
July 3 – Newcastle – Lass’o'gowrie.
July 5 – Brisbane – The Troubadour.
July 9 – Melbourne – Toff In Town (w/ Merri-May Gill (Brisbane). Josh Earl MC.)
July 12 – Hobart – The Republic (w/ Charles Du Cane, No Josh Earl).
July 16 – Burnie – Stagedoor Cafe (Solo)

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STORYTIME

(Brought to you by Lost In Translation the pinball game. The world’s first minimalist pinball machine. See how long you can keep Bill Murray’s head in play, at 100000 release ‘Multiplot’ with Scarlett Johansen entering the fray.)

Until April 19 2009, I’d never broken a bone, and I was proud of my track record. This long lasting love affair with self preservation came crashing down along with me and my push bike. I was three quarters through my season in the Melbourne Comedy Festival. It was the Sunday of a Tuesday-Sunday run and I was feeling somewhat ‘emotionally volatile.’ I’d visited a friend to sell her my spare pedal tuner for some cash flow, bolted over to safeway and done my patented ’shopping without a list wandering the aisles scowling over every item’ routine. I had a backpack bulging with goods and I was in a rush to get home and cook some chops in time to have a nap before my show. I was cycling dangerously, and I knew it. It was night, I had no lights on my bike and dark clothes on. I gunned up to the intersection, which was red and thought, ‘hey look at me, I’m a bike, I can do what I want.’ I burned around the intersection and pedalled as fast as I could down a busy main street. I was hitting my top speed when in front of me a parked car flung open its driver’s side door. I had one second to sit with the fact that I was about to ride straight into it.

HIT!

I flew through the air like a bony ghost. It was dark, the blood was hurtling to my head. Instincts activated. My body braced itself. The bike came with me. I couldn’t tell you the maths of what happened. I landed with a full-blooded thud, directly on my right shoulder. It must have looked terrible. At first I was winded, slightly in shock. I lay on my side, still alive, an instant survivor. A young couple loomed over me.
‘Mate are you all right?’
‘Do you need an ambulance?’
‘Can you sit up?’
‘Move your fingers.’
‘I didn’t see you.’

My first response was to laugh. I was tipsy with adrenalin. ‘Ha, oh man, oh f*&k, I totally stacked my bike.’ I’d been a tightly compacted spring for so long; this crash had unravelled me. Sure, I was stunned and scratched and smacked around, but the pain wasn’t piercing, and there was something already darkly amusing about it. I’d been running myself at maximum speed for two whole months and now I’d been stubbed out in a second by a giant hand. I’d crashed my bike like a twelve year old and was sprawled out like a drugged dog. It felt like life was sharing a divine joke. A hyperactive uncle pulling the rug from under me, leaning over with whiskey breath and grinning. ‘Hey kiddo, seriously, there’s only so much you can do. Take five you bozo.’

I told the couple I didn’t want an ambulance because I couldn’t afford it. Clearly my brain hadn’t been injured in the accident. My first instinct was to check my guitar strumming arm that had taken the fall. I almost cried. My favourite lambswool cardigan was torn at the elbow! The couple who’s car I’d hit offered to take me to a hospital, but I thought I should just go home. It turns out they were off duty policeman! It explained why they were so efficient at checking on me. Once I was home I sat on my bed holding ice to my shoulder as it began to clamp up. I had a little weep. This was appalling timing. I rang my best mate Tammy, and we taxi’d to Royal Melbourne hospital. After an obligatory wait in emergency (I was tempted to reprise the junkie character from my show and ask why it was taking so long) my arm was x-rayed and I was informed I’d broken my arm. I would have to cancel the rest of my Comedy Festival Shows. Alone in the doctors office, my heart sank. ‘You f$%ked up,’ I thought. Like a lung, my heart revived again. I looked up at the bright lights, my arm in a sling, my legs dangling over the bed and chuckled in disbelief. ‘Finally, you get a break.’

Arm-breaking FAQ

Q. Was it really your humerus?
A. Yes.

Q. Was it really on the 86 line?
A. Well, it was just off it. We had to beat up the story a bit for the press release.

Q. You should have caught the 86 tram! Has anyone said that?
A. Yes.

Q. Were you wearing a helmet?
A. Yes, and I didn’t hit my head at all.

Q. Was it the driver’s fault? Are they liable?
A. I was riding at night in dark clothes without lights, and he is a policeman, somehow I don’t like my chances in a court of law.

Q. Were they cranky?
A. No, they were completely lovely. They even knocked on the neighbours door to see if it was okay to chain my bike up. The neighbour brought out some ice in a bag (not the drug). Everyone was very kind. Well, excect there was some old geezer who thought it’d be helpful twenty seconds after the crash to lean over and say ‘you should have had lights on.’ Too soon Pops!

Q. Are you covered by the TAC for loss of income?
A. I’ve put an application in, but I think you have to have an income first. Seriously though, they have a rule where they won’t claim for the first five days after the accident, which would have been my final run of shows. I may be able to average out earnings based on my last tax return, but I’m not sure. They do cover hospital and physio costs though.

Q. Do you have a cast?
A. No, I’m still writing the screenplay. Seriously though, you couldn’t put a cast on it because its right up near the shoulder. It was just in a sling, which started to smell funny after a week so I washed it in the shower. Also, it would get crumbs in it a lot. There was a great moment where I tried returning some Mini HD tapes to Ted’s Camerahouse, but i’d passed the fourteen day return period. So I moped out and stood outside on a busy Elizabeth street just reaching into my sling and flinging crumbs out onto the street. Breaking your arm as an adult isn’t as fun as when you’re a kid. People can’t write on your sling and my Mum was nowhere to be seen.

Q. Do they charge you to cancel your shows?
A. Someone mentioned a rumour that Ticketmaster have a $100 per show cancellation fee, but I’m yet to investigate. The thing that hurts most of all is I could have made up to $4000 if I’d sold out the remaining six shows. Camp me doesn’t think about that. Quick Camp Me, distract me with something…”would Vulcan girls be good in bed? They sure would be logical…”

Q, Did you consider getting someone to play guitar?
A. I did consider it, but there wasn’t enough time for anyone to learn that much of a show and pull it off. Also, I had no backings to the songs.

Q. How’s the arm now?
A. It only hurts when I roll on it in bed. I can’t lift my arm above 45 degrees though, and it may be like that for a couple of months. I can’t do any heavy lifting for three months.

Q. But your ego, how are you going to carry that around?
A. Friends.

Q. What terrible timing. I’m so sorry for you.
A. Seriously, it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I was taking my body for granted.

Q. Quit smoking then.
A. No.

THE END.

———————————————————————–

LAYTOPING IS MISPELLED, AND FREE! WHAT A GREAT GIFT IDEA, AND IT’LL CUT YOUR ENERGY BILLS IN HALF! SEND IT TO A FRIEND!

****************************************************************************
NOTICE & DISCLAIMER: The word tableau of this weemail and any piles transmitted with it are rad and intended solely for youse to which they are undressed. If you are not youse, then whose the hell are youse? Please delete the sh$% out of this message immediately – and prance on down to your local Catholic Church and ask forgiveness for the grinsins you may have committed. Forwarding, dispersing or editing this email in any way is strictly encouraged. Whilst
all due care is taken to use words like whilst, LapTopping will lose your emotional baggage and laugh at you in the cold harsh light of day. ALL CARE NO RESPONSIBILITY. Seriously, anyone up for a long-term relationship? Due to unforeseen circumstances this heart has experienced an error and needs to close, please call back closer to the date for any important updates and do continue to experience our range of services and products. I’m a little pot of sour man-sauce ready to taste up your stir-fry of doubts, milady. BUY MY TAPE!

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ISSUE 70
Estimated Reading Time: Two and a half minutes. (Going off how long you are when you say you’ll only be a minute).

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LT BIRTHDAYS

Happy Birthday Hope Davis (American Splendour) 45 today!
Happy Birthday Damon Albarn 42 today!
Happy Birthday Princess Eugenie of York 19 today!

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STREET TEAM RECRUITAROO!

Dear you, yes you. Would you like to hand out flyers outside Town Hall between 7-9pm in exchange for tickets to my comedy festival show, Bedroom Philosopher merchandise and half a sandwich? Reply to this email with your available days and phone number. It would be between April 2-20. Preferably early on in the piece, Tuesday-Sunday. If you’re ultra keen and would like to do more than one shift then priceless bounties await. Email laptopping @ bedroomphilosopher . com

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TEXT MESSAGE BLUNDERS

Let’s go to the movies
Let’s go to tie mother

Hey Alice hope you’re ace
Hey Algae hope you’re bad

take care roads are icy
take cape sober is gay

I’m in a rush
I’m in a suzi

your song was lovely
your pong was loudly

see you for brunch
pee you for crunch

catch you soon
batch you smoo

do you know what time you are on
do you know what vine you ape on

Thanks Darling
Thanks Earking

I think about our kiss
I think about our lisp

I love you
I loud wot

I crave your body
I brave your andy

I’m full of lust
I’m full of kurt

let’s watch a dvd
let’s watch a dud

That sounds fascinating xxx
That sounds fascinating zzz

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GUERILLAGRAMS!

Great moments in unsolicited conversation.

From Amanda Bishop, Adelaide.

At work, I was using a computer in a communal area and two female workmates were standing next to me talking.
Woman 1: So I didn’t see you at the meeting yesterday.
Woman 2: No, I was showing my vagina to the doctor.
Woman 1: ………
Woman 2: What?! You say you go to the dentist so why not this??
Woman 1: Yeah, but you don’t say “I went do the dentist to show them my teeth.”
Woman 2: Well, that’s true.
Exit both women.

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INANIMATE OBJECT BEREAVEMENT NOTICES

*****
RETIRED
*****

From Zenobia Frost, Brisbane.

“I’d like to thank my old orange mobile, Betty, for years of good service. I especially liked how she continued to send me messages from the 2007 Big Day Out over a year after the event, as if to make up for bad reception at the Gold Coast. These echoes were poignant texts from a friend I had been separated from on the day, first received on the bus on the way home, then repeated every few months for all time:
“Peaches makes me hot.”
“I’m wearing someone else’s beer.”
“I’m all alone by the mechanical chickens. Help me.”
Betty has been replaced by a shinier phone with fewer abandonment issues.”

*************************************
WE PRAY FOR THEIR RECALIBRATION
*************************************

SEND YOUR GUERILLAGRAMS AND BEREAVEMENT NOTICES TO laptopping @ bedroomphilosopher . com

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GET A WRIGGLE ON GOOGLET!

Phrases people have typed into Google to land on my website:

(NOTE: I am able to access the back-end of my website and it gives me all kinds of stats, including the on average, 600 different phrases people typed into Google to find my site. Because of the vast amount of text on my site, I have a higher ratio of random words being found together. E.G. Let’s take the first one “slap together stir fry” turns out my website comes up number one for this search! It’s because I wrote a column called “Food Slap Club” a take off of fight club, and mentioned slapping someone’s stir fry out of their hands. No other site features stir fry and the word slap so close together. All the phrases are real and you don’t want to know how many are ‘unfit for print.’)

“slap together stir fry”
“sofisticated nautical theme bedroom picture”
“body points where girls get seductive”
“can u see the plough from the southern hemisphere”
“bags don spencer”
“patti smith taking off her shoes and socks”
“how to twist a balloon bow and arrow balloon-bow-and-arrow balloon or party or twisting how to -hunting”
“simon and gurfel”
“gary numan doesn t talk to crowd”
“qualities of pineapple”
“how easy is it to get a forklift job in melbourne”

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TIME IS CHEESE AND MOUSE IS HUNGRY!

Look Around You!

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A GIGGLE OF GIGS

SONGS FROM THE 86 TRAM @ EUROPEAN BIER CAFE. 2-25 April. (No Mondays). 9:45pm. (Sundays 845pm). Cnr Exhibition / Lt Collins. Bookings through ticketmaster 1300 660 or www.comedyfestival.com.au

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STORYTIME

(Brought to you by Whimsy Flakes. The artistically engineered breakfast cereal guaranteed to give you all the nutrients you need for a day making wheat-bag owls.)

THE BEDROOM PHILOSOPHER’S RECENT GIG DIARY

Feb 5 Heywire presentation Dinner. Old Parliament House, Canberra.

Heywire is the ABC radio documentary competition I won in 2001, which directly led to the whole Bedroom Philosopher thing. I was asked to go back as an alumni (Aboriginal for ‘has wikipedia page but still no spicks n specks) and perform in front of the regional youth winners, guests and my favourite, politicians! After unloading Medium Ted and other scissor kicking clapalong thrash quirk, the MC dropped the nervous laughter inducing ‘Justin is one of the Heywire success stories, but after that I’m not so sure.’ FACT: The baked Salmon was amazing, and later, I played Twister with the kids and won.

Feb 14 Thin Green Line Festival, Coolart.

For some reason the more laid back and peaceful the hippy festival, the more I want to swear. They loved it! TIP: Outdoor festival gigs aren’t great for comedy, you can’t hear any laughs as they disappear into the big blue sky. Afterwards we were swarmed by girls and boys wanting to buy things. One in four people bought an album. GREAT STATS! The front of house crew weren’t impressed as I commando rolled over Mad Dog’s drum riser during Gen ABC. Less so when I demanded that they remove the fly buzzing around me as I “couldn’t work in these conditions” FACT: Most common problem at outdoor festival: set list blowing away. During Wow Wow’s Song rockout Flutes McGee went so crazy he actually broke his flute! IN A SONG HE DOESN’T EVEN PLAY ON. That’s the Awkwardstra difference. This festival was smallish which is a good quality in a festival. Later, while walking to the toilet a man with a flyer asked me to take five minutes to consider the planned redevelopment of the local coastline and I WASN’T THERE FOR HIM! The VIP area had couches, beers, other people and a lovely girl who’s job it was to bring us chicken wraps with pumpkin dips. Afterwards, we went for our first BAND SWIM! Where we tried our first Awkwardstra pyramid of power. Success!

February 19. University of Canberra Commencement Ceremony.

Canberra was cha-ching capital in February, as I was again asked back as a success story (one who comes with a long introduction for those that haven’t heard of said success) to speak in a lecture hall at 1030am to first year students and parents. I opened with something like ‘it’s hard competing with a free sausage sizzle outside’ and there were at least FOUR laughs! It was a gentle wander through my life, with jokes, including the idea that ‘when you work it out, each lecture is costing you about $50, which you pay even if you don’t go, so you should print out tickets and consider them gigs you’ve already got tickets for.’ That got laughs, both mine. Later that day, I performed on the Uni concourse during clubs and societies recruitment day. There was an old bloke MC on stage who, one minute before I went on informed everyone that there was a ‘breakdancing battle with prize money’ in the bar. I was so put out by his lack of camaraderie that after one song I challenged the crowd to my own break dancing battle, putting my iphone ‘in the ring’ and doing a headstand. The first years were PETRIFIED. One girl was reported as saying ‘he’s got no shame!’

February 19. Front Cafe, Lyneham.

Dear Canberra, last time I played here, you let me down. 35 payers at Toast for my single launch? Ouch. Tonight though, you were exemplary. You were good looking, friendly and smart. And you got excited about my personalised ties for sale UNLIKE MELBOURNE who just walks past because they feel they can get things like that anywhere. There was a hundred of you in the intimate 70’s couch space. One of you even started singing along to “Happy Cow” causing me to pass out with overwhelminity. Seriously Canberra, thanks – you’re currently number two behind Melbourne, but ahead of Sydney. (NO GRIZZLING HOBART)

March 11. NSW Art Gallery.

My friend Flacco got me this gig, speaking as a ‘celebrity’ the same way that the kid off the ‘that’s no how you make porridge ads’ might do talks at restaurant openings. Get this, I wrote my HALF HOUR speech, a gentle wander through my life, with jokes and four songs and was all prepared and ready to rumble. Then, I got to the gallery, intending to print out the speech off a memory stick only to find that it was ACCESS DENIED o’clock on all their computers! Their techie informs me that my stick has been locked to my laptop only. RIDICULOUS SYSTEM. With 20 minutes remaining till I went on, and NO SPEECH whatsoever on me, I had to ring my friend Leigh Rigozzi who I was staying with, and get him to ring his house and see if anyone was home. There was, so after lots of missed called and hangups I talked a chap through how to get onto my laptop and get the file and email it to me with literally THREE MINUTES LEFT! How were my nerves? No, seriously, how the bananas were they? I tried so hard to appear courteous and professional to the lovely Gallery staff, only to be later biting my elbows and gasping ‘Oh my god, oh why is this happening now. To me! Sweet baby bunting!’ In the end, it all worked out. I just did the kind of speech you might expect from someone in an orange shirt and brown tie with bobsled motif – it was, as a middle class Sydney sider did say ‘cute.’ TIPS: It’s hard to get big reactions in Art Galleries – people stifle their laughs.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Come to my comedy festival show. Even you PERTH! Ever heard of a LAUGHING HOLIDAY?

THE END
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LAYTOPING IS MISPELLED, AND FREE! WHAT A GREAT GIFT IDEA, AND IT’LL CUT YOUR ENERGY BILLS IN HALF! SEND IT TO A FRIEND!

****************************************************************************
NOTICE & DISCLAIMER: LapTopping is transmitted by the power of the memory of your first love. That green eyed brown haired delight, all smiles and slow motion. It is intended to fly like word kites, dancing in your soft sighs, as you climb the laser ladder of dreams and hard thoughts. LapTopping encourages you to reset yourself on a daily basis – get dumped by waves then scull ginger beer by a shady rock. Spend time with she who can make good crusty rolls. There are flavours on your tongue and truths in your mind too strong to disregard. What if you really were as beautiful as you have been told? Your only fear is how gold your ideas might actually be, and what fruity shock would be felt in the hearts of those who witnessed you spreading your bedsheet dragon wings and piercing the ice-fresh nucleus of possibility. Your spiritual home exists and you have been there and have not lost it. It would never leave you, it loves you too much.

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ISSUE 69
Estimated Reading Time: 9:53

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LT BIRTHDAYS

Happy Birthday Ice-T 51 today!
Happy Birthday John McEnroe 50 today!

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RECENTLY REGISTERED COVER BANDS

Rage Against The Sewing Machine – Gentle indie acoustic versions.
Queens Of The Old Age – The CWA chorale’s dedication to Josh Homme.
Silverhair – The RSL’s take on Daniel Johns.
CRABBA – Feminist take on Swedish pop.
ACTC – Canberra based Acca Dacca fans.
The Foetals – Slow, depressing, instrumental versions of Beatles hits.
Poofmother – Bogan rock tribute to defunct band they don’t like.
Catholica – Christian Metallica fans.
Judgemental As Anything – See above.
Bindi Lauper – Childrens act based on Cyndi Lauper songs.
Rodeohead – Country take on Thom Yorke.
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Bette – Bette Midler Tribute.
A Polyphonic Spree – One guy, a lot of ringtones.
Mews – Muse songs with singing replaced by cats.

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GUERILLAGRAMS!

Great moments in unsolicited conversation.

From Jessica.

Me: (after getting my report card for school) Ah I hate English it’s so hard.
Friend: Well, why don’t you drop down to standard?
Me: I’m already in standard.
Friend: Go down to English as a second language.

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INANIMATE OBJECT BEREAVEMENT NOTICES

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RETIRED
*****

From Justin Heazlewood, Melbourne.

“I wish to congratulate my Nokia phone for its four years of reliable service. Over this time it has served me well as a phone, voice recorder, torch and at times, spirit level, although the compass function was never a strong point. Constantly full of sms’s, its CPU was always being tested, and although it did mix some messages around towards the end, it never lost any. Nokia, you’ve been a solid friend over the years but I knew this day would come, and it’s time for us to part ways. On behalf of myself and my new iphone we wish you all the best in your retirement napping in my top desk drawer.”

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WE PRAY FOR THEIR RECALIBRATION
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SEND YOUR GUERILLAGRAMS AND BEREAVEMENT NOTICES TO THIS ADDRESS.

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GET A WRIGGLE ON GOOGLET!

Phrases people have typed into Google to land on my website:

“3rd cricket teat”
“why are people are scared of you”
“what do frequent one night stands say about one s mentality”
“do kisses at the end of a text message mean anything”
“how do i know if i m postmodern?”
“toaster shoots bread vovos”
“the world is fucked and i am so alone”
“woollen bookmarks”
“sideburn appreciation society”
“ridiculously subtle”
“what happened to simon day from ratcat”

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TIME IS CHEESE AND MOUSE IS HUNGRY!

Look at Ariel Pink do stuff.

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A GIGGLE OF GIGS

(CANBERRA, SYDNEY MELBOURNE)

CANBERRA
The Front Cafe, Lyneham. Thursday February 19. 8:30pm. $10.

SYDNEY
Mic In Hand, Friend In Hand Hotel. Thursday March 12. $12.

MELBOURNE
Short set supporting Spooky Men’s Chorale, who are awfully good. Feb 21. Lithuanian Club. $20/$15.

BROWN & ORANGE ALBUM LAUNCH @ THE CORNER – 19 March.
Featuring Special Guests Tripod, The Suitcase Royale plus DJ’s Emma Peel & Master Bedroom. $17 plus b.f. Or $22 on the door.

SONGS FROM THE 86 TRAM @ EUROPEAN BIER CAFE. 2-25 April. (No Mondays). 9:45pm.
My first solo Melbourne Comedy Festival show in four years. Witness the fitness.

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STORYTIME

(Brought to you by Chad Mashups Waterslide Bowling. Combine the summer fun of water sliding with the skill of ten pin bowling, simply bowl your ball and then follow it down the four story ‘super loop.’ Even if you don’t knock ‘em all down, you’re sure to get a spare when you come crashing through after.)

In 2001 I was wandering around the Salvation Army at Fishwick in Canberra when I checked out the cassette section. Amongst the usual plastic muesli of bad 90’s pop and obscure classical was a large rectangular case holding twenty five tapes. I lifted the lid to find a set of home recordings all labelled and catalogued. There were titles like ‘Dad 1975,’ ‘Maxine 1977′ and one which really intrigued me ‘Social Life In The Psychiatric Unit.’ I bought the set for $10 and took them home.
Straight away I put on the ‘Social Life’ tape. It was mesmerising. ‘Charles’ the owner of the collection was interviewing patients at the psychiatric hospital he had been admitted to, asking them if they knew any good jokes. The audio was surprisingly good. You could hear the television in the lounge room and nurses pushing trolleys up the corridors.
I listened to another tape. On this one Charles was ’speaking a letter’ to a friend. He was a young, eccentric British man of twenty one talking of ‘cool droogs’ and how ‘totally mad and superb’ the holidays were going to be. He was so funny and likeable. He jumped from tales of trying to score ‘dishy birds’ to asking if his friend had heard of The Sex Pistols. The ‘Maxine’ tape was a friend of Charles speaking him a letter. She had a husky half-french, half-british accent and spoke candidly of her holiday in Spain and going to art school. I instantly fell in love with her.
Nearly every tape in the collection had some magical quality to it. Charles and his friends spoke with such fervour and character that you swore some of it was being directed by Wes Anderson. A highlight was a conversation between Charles and an older patient.
Woman: You may record my voice, but I’ll not do any jokes…my clown has left me…I only have tear drops. Do you want me to tell you a joke that isn’t funny?
Charles: Yeah.
Woman: I fancy you.
Charles: That isn’t a joke.
Woman: I told you it wasn’t funny.
Years went by and I didn’t think of the tapes much. When I began working on my second Bedroom Philosopher album I had the idea of sampling them on the album. While listening through to them again I heard Charles mention his family in New Zealand. Google searches had brought up nothing for Charles, but the cousin he mentioned did show up at an art gallery in New Zealand. I took a punt and emailed her. She was the one! She informed me that the family had no idea about the tapes, and that Charles had died in 1980 when he was just twenty five. I told them about my intentions, and they agreed to let me use the tapes as long as I sent them some copies on CD. I still hadn’t solved the puzzle of how a collection of tapes from a young British man in 1975 ended up abandoned in a Canberra op shop in 2001.
I was awfully sad to hear that Charles had died. Perhaps I harboured the possibility of tracking him down. Listening to him on the tapes was such an intimate, joyous experience. It’s such a strange treat to hear someone speaking to you with the excitement and honesty normally reserved for a best friend. I know there’s a major art project in store that will truly do justice to this collection, but for now I’m just happy that these precious recordings and Charles’ memorable voice will survive. It makes me think about how our memories will live on once we die.

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LAYTOPING IS MISPELLED, AND FREE! WHAT A GREAT GIFT IDEA, AND IT’LL CUT YOUR ENERGY BILLS IN HALF! SEND IT TO A FRIEND!

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