The limited edition maxi-single of Folkstar/I’m So Post Modern is available by mail order. Click HERE to put in an order. Details are now up in the DISCOGRAPHY SECTION

* I have changed management, parting with Laughing Stock Productions and teaming up with Vanilla Productions, run by the very lovely Saskia Moore. She has previously worked with performance oddity Sam Simmons, and produced the successful impro show ‘160 characters.’ (where performances are based on audience text messages.) She is also managing psychobilly gypsy jazz band Martin Martini & The Bone Palace Orchestra.

• Hock your cassettes! Burn your sheet music. Eat some tuna! A new album is coming! I’ve started pre-production already (ie tuned the guitar and made some awful noises on my novelty keyboard mouse)
An initial list of 17 songs has been drawn up – but I’m planning to whittle it to around 14. All new, apart from Jesus On Big Brother and My Nan Really Likes Radiohead. The album will be much more musically advanced, and as it’s the second album, I’m planning to completely over-produce it and suffocate all the quaint lo-fi charms of my previous work. I’m going to be working with Uncle Ken again, but also looking at recording the more complex stuff with a producer in Melbourne. I’m hoping to have things finished by the end of the year. Is 32 tracks of distorted banjo too much?

• My writing time for The Ronnie Johns Half Hour has finished. Overall, there aren’t that many of my sketches included – I wrote the ones you liked. I have once again turned up on Centrelink’s door, drunk, vulnerable and demanding to be taken back. Centrelink, understandably, has given me a businesslike, yet hostile reception. Someone once told me that to save on waiting in queue you just have to urinate on yourself and they deal with you straight away. Can I just point out that the theory doesn’t apply when you are phoning them up.

• I’ve hit 1000 Myspace friends! My abandonment issues have subsided temporarily from the onslaught of cyber support. I feel like that nerd in that teen movie who gets really drunk and then sings paradise city and dives into the crowd and everybody loves him all of a sudden.

• I’m currently on a private vigil of seeing how long my sideburns will grow. These superchops are quite Uma Thurman in quality, in that sometimes they look fantastic, and sometimes they look mostly frightening. Close friends have openly stated that they make them feel physically sick, but for me it’s the facial hair version of getting a tattoo. It’s an individual thing and it doesn’t matter if anyone else likes it. Plus, it’s really just so I can do my Wolverine joke.

• After five years I have bought some new glasses. They are green and quite similar in design to my previous pair. OPSM get no stars for their service, and managed to make three separate mistakes in the two month ordeal. Apparently the shipment of coke bottles they were planning to meltdown was intercepted by ill informed Russian militia.

• I have some tips for Melbourne Fringe Shows:

Penny Machinations – A collection of arcade tents containing one on one theatrical experiences. Winner of Most Outstanding Special event in 2005.
LCUK – Sean M Whelan and The Mime Set. The best spoken word/rock collaboration you’re likely to ever see. A brilliant man.

Al Qaeda Saves Christmas – With Ben Pobjie, Esteban David Do Santos and Joey “Crazy Elf” Kurtschenko (Ben Pobje is an undiscovered genius.)
Lawrence Leung: The Marvellous Misadventures of Puzzle Boy
Andrew Maclelland’s Mix Tape.
Both only doing 3 shows! Top lads.

Check out www.melbournefringe.com.au for details.