Director’s Choice Award at MICF. National tour planned.

NEWS

(Brought to you by the new collaboration between The Kinks and Skunkhour. ‘The Kunks.’)

♥ My Melbourne Comedy Festival Show “Songs From The 86 Tram” went extremely well. I almost sold out all fifteen shows, until I broke my humerus by riding my bike into a car door. I won the Director’s Choice award, including $1000 cash. The show received great reviews, including a personal thumbs up from one of my heroes, Tony Martin. It was sort of devastating having to cancel the show, but it did create a groundswell of support and good wishes, with which I was spiritually nourished. I plan to reprise the show for Melbourne Fringe Festival. Warm thanks to everyone who came to see it and laughed in the hard to reach places. Special congratulations to my chum Matt Kelly (The Harmonica Lewinski’s) who won The Golden Gibbo award along with Richard Higgins for ‘The List Operators.’ Go independent comedy!

♥ At 7pm on April 19 I broke my arm. Specifically, I fractured the greater tuberosity of my humerus. It is a compound fracture on the very corner bit of my shoulder bone. It also means that many of my shoulder tendons have come off the bone, so I can’t move my arm much. There was a slim chance I had to be operated on, to put a pin in and hold the bone in place, but I’ve been able to make do with my arm in a sling. It’s been three 1 / 2 weeks and my arm is out of the sling and I can do basic things like typing and spreading toast, which is 3 / 4 of my life. I’ll be able to start playing guitar in a week. The pain has been relatively minimal so far. Special mention to Janet Mcleod, Emilie Zoey Baker, Jamie Power and Claire Hollingsworth who all dropped off food parcels, and to Andy Hazel for the bone knitting, slightly illegal Comfrey tea.

♥ Fortunately I don’t have a lot of gigs on over this time, apart from Comedy Festival Roadshow. I am doing five shows in regional Victoria. I will be able to play the finger picking songs, and have arranged for stylish comedian Oliver Clarke to be my ‘right hand man’ on stage, should I need to rock out.

♥ The national ‘Brown & Orange’ tour is in place for early July. Check the gig guide. I’m currently trying to book in Adelaide and Perth, unfortunately I won’t be able to bring The Awkwardstra to these far-flung places.

♥ My radio show ‘Lime Champions’ is in full swing. You can stream it every Monday at 7pm at rrr.org.au but no new podcasts planned as yet. The link to the old podcast is working again.

♥ ‘Brown & Orange’ is faring well in the reviewing stakes, with five out of six reviews being quite positive. Melbourne Inpress even liked Wow Wow’s Song, saying it has “the most ridiculously catchy chorus this century has produced. Six minutes chock full of sublime gimmick pop.” It often described as ‘not my favourite song.’

♥ My accident has given me time to catch up on some key viewing. I’ve been reliving my favourite childhood series ‘The Mysterious Cities Of Gold’ and it isn’t disappointing me! Thank goodness. Thirty Rock series three was characteristically brilliant, while I am proud to announce that I’m officially hooked on Gossip Girl. I don’t even think the ‘90210 for our generation’ is trashy, I just think its a good show about hot, rich New York kids and their problems. Also heavily recommended is the album ‘Fate’ from Dr Dog and any Dustin Hoffman film from the 70’s – he was on fire! (Midnight Cowboy, The Graduate, Lenny.). Also, Chris Morris’ experimental UK sketch show ‘Jam.’

♥ I’m 28 and I’ve made an important discovery in life. You can buy a four pack of Drumsticks for about $8. If you buy four individually, they cost $14. That’s a massive saving! It’s the new way to think about icecreams. There’s no reason why you can’t have pudding every night of the week!