You'd think having spent three years at the University of Canterbury not doing a double degree in law and economics and doing a degree in business administration, with a good dollop of marketing and sociology, I'd have some of idea of how to sell a theatre show, but I don't.
I know you're meant to make up some posters and flyers. The previous AD of a theatre I worked at insisted all posters, "must be able to be read from a bus." I'm still not certain if he meant the poster must be able to be read from a moving bus, or if the poster itself was on a moving bus and must be able to be read by someone not on the bus, or if the poster should be able to be read by someone on the bus with the poster, but Melbourne has trams so it doesn't matter anyway.
Flyers though are crucial. I've had previous experience with flyers. Flyers are horrible. I dislike them intently. The only thing worse than giving a flyer is being given one. Nobody wants a flyer. They are little bits of paper laminated in lies. The flyer giver is pretending to like you, the flyer is riddled with cobbled corrupt quotes from fictitious publications about a completely different show to the one on the flyer, and the flyer recipient says they will definitely come to your show when they have no intention of attending. Sometimes the flyer recipient will reciprocate and perpetuate the lie cycle by giving you a flyer to their show, 'I Had A Nervous Breakdown But I'm Feeling Better About It Now I Can Sing And Smoke And Argue with My Mother And Eleven Other Family Members: **** The Scottish Age Herald Sun Tribune Time Out Someone's Blog Fringe Review', and then you have to gush a fountain of lies about how you'll definitely come along and tell all your friends and tweet and post and vote for them in the online audience Best of the Fringe Award.
I blew all my advertising budget, or what happened to be in my bank account at the time, on 50 posters and 500 flyers for Heroic Faun No. One. 50 posters isn't a lot, but I'm terrified of them after the traumatic experience of watching nine of my A3 posters get wiped out by one giant AFUCKOFF U2 Zooropa poster in Christchurch, minutes after I'd stuck them up with sticky tape, two toilet rolls, one pipe cleaner and a pair of snips. The entire poster run for my show, 'Whoops I've Lost My Pukeko In A Moist Place **** The Christchurch Bugler', was eviscerated by this monstrosity.
BoNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
New Zooland. Hilarious. And Bono's got a fag in his mouth, which is hardly setting a good example for the youth is it. The Edge actually looks like he's celebrating the fact he ruined my season and Adam looks like he's been human centepeded onto the edge of The Edge. The only one who seems the slightest bit remorseful is Larry, and he's always been my favourite B52U2er. Thank you Larry.
I've given five of my posters to the Fringe and they've put them up somewhere. I'm using another 15 of them during the season for Sandro to sketch a picture of a lucky audience member on the back. A few have been given away and the cat chewed up one, so that leaves about 20. Now, in real time, I shall go and conquer my U2 fear, by putting up 8% of my poster run on a bollard on the corner of Stanley Street and Smith Street, and take photos to prove it...talk amongst yourselves, I may be gone for some time.
I'm back. It all went off without a hitch. Here I am buying the naughty tools of my trade at Woolworths. I'm wearing my official 'The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe' cap to hide my identity, and for its symbolic symbolism. I'm a bit blotchy in the face due to nervousness and being allergic to everything.
Elmer's School Glue was on special at $2.49
Here is a photo of the bollard before my heroic assault.
It was a tough choice as to the posters I would have to envelop, but after seconds of deep contemplation I decided Turbonegro and Spiritualized could cope with the marketing hit. I've hyperlinked to their shows as a small token of my remorse, and I think Spiritualized may have already sold out. Now it was time to break out the Elmers and get marketing!
Generations of school children have grown up with this #1 brand of
school glue. Elmer’s washable no-run school glue is easy to use and
stays where you put it. It is safe, non-toxic and washable, so
accidental messes mean easy clean-up!
You may notice I'm wearing sunglasses now as well as my cap. That's because I'm very famous in Melbourne and didn't want anyone to see me pasting up my own posters. A police car drove past slowly...
Bad Greg, bad Greg, whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do with your Elmer's Glue?
...but I just kept on gluing. Soon, the first posters were in place.
And finally, here's the completed bollard in action, busy generating thousands of dollars worth of ticket sales.
Ooooh, I must get tickets to that!
Wow. I've overcome a phobia that's crippled me emotionally and professionally for 20 years, and I've still got 16 posters and 200 flyers left. What a day! Tickets must be flying out of the internet by now, so go here quick and don't miss out.
Regular readers of this sporadic blog might know that from time to time I like to do a bit of acting. I'm not a trained actor per se, in that I didn't attend such esteemed institutions as RADA, LAMBA, LADA or BADABING, however that hasn't stopped me from tackling such meaty roles as, 'The Big Bad Wolf', 'Gerry Brownlee', 'All three of the three bears in Goldilocks & The Three Bears at once', and 'Godzilla'. Godzilla was particularly tricky as I couldn't see out of his big green foamy head and had to negotiate my way by lifting my green flippers high while feeling for set/actors/children with my green rubber gloves. I only fell over once, but that was due more to a two hour session at the Dux before the final show.
Regular readers will also know that I've done a show called 'Heroic Faun No. One' a couple of times. It's a one-man show about my time as a featured extra on the Disney film, 'The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe.' One-man shows are done for two reasons. The first is so an established and famous actor can show off without fear of being upstaged by some young go-getter just out of LABIA. Jean-Luc Picard handled 43 parts in his one-man adaptation of 'A Christmas Carol', and the baddie from Beverly Hills Cop has done heaps of one-man shows, probably because everyone is too scared to share the stage with him.
"Go on...say your line punk."
A friend of mine, who was a centaur in 'The Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe', waited at stage door to get this man's autograph after his one-man version of 'The Metamorphosis', and he metamorphosised my friend into a blubbering wreck when he couldn't get the cap off his Sharpie fast enough. My friend is 6' 2" and bald, and this Beverly Hills baddie crushed him like the dung beetle he'd just been pretending to be. Scary stuff.
The second reason one-man shows are done is because the actor is not well known, and has no money to pay for things like other actors, set, props, costumes, producers, publicists, designers and a director, but still craves the opportunity to wake up in the middle of the night soaking in stress induced sweat, wondering if they will get 30% for the season to make enough to cover the venue and projector hire, indemnity insurance, festival registration fee, 500 flyers, 50 posters, bottle of spirit gum, crepe hair, wig, green and red fabric and back up rubber sword.
Thankfully I have managed to surround myself with a small group of tremendously talented and generous people who seem happy to give up their time and expertise to help me run around on stage in green tights for 55 minutes playing 12 different people, none of whom are Godzilla. If you happen to be in Melbourne anytime from this Friday until October 13th, you might want to come along by going here first.
I was still very sleepy while watching the London Olympics Closing Ceremony this morning, but here's a review of the bits I can remember. I turned on the tele a few minutes after it started and saw a woman singing who I thought was Adele, but it wasn't. Then the guy from Auf Wiedersehen Pet popped out of something pretending to be Winston Churchill, while Stomp stomped and banged rubbish bins. It was only then that I noticed that the stage was in the shape of the Union Jack and everything was covered in big newspapers before the kettle whistled, so I missed most of Madness. They were singing 'Our House'. I wished they were doing 'Baggy Trousers', because I quite like that song, but everybody in the Olympics wore incredibly tight trousers so it probably wasn't appropriate. Then the Pet Shop boys came on dressed as black cones and Neil Tennant sang 'West End Girls' while Andrew Ridgely played the keyboard because George Michael didn't want anything to do with him. Actually before that there were some young boys on the back of a truck who I think were a Harry Potter themed boy-band called Wand Erection, although I was waiting for my toast to pop and not concentrating so they may have been the Spice Girls.
Then the Olympics DJ played a bit of a Beatles song because Paul McCartney was disqualified from singing it after fluffing the start to 'Hey Jude' at the Opening Ceremony. Ray Davies sang 'Waterloo Sunset' while everybody else was dressed as ABBA and dancing to 'Waterloo'. Adele sang again but it wasn't Adele. I smeared some of Dick Smith's Magnificent Australian Grown Honey, a "specially prepared premium blend by Dick Smith", on my toast and it was indeed magnificent. I thought Dick Smith only made do-it-yourself crystal sets and flew around the world in his helicopter, but trust me, his honey is to die for.
All the athletes came in with their iPhones and iPads as the official Olympic Worldwide partner Samsung sang the blues. Elbow sang two lovely songs while Eddie McGuire and some woman spouted incessant crap all over them. I really don't like Eddie McGuire. I've never met him but I know if I did I wouldn't take to him at all. He's like a cross between Paul Henry, Mike Hosking and a pooh, and I don't like any of them. For high performance athletes they were all moving very slowly, so the Olympics DJ had to play all the songs we'd already heard and ruined the magic by revealing lots of Milli Vanilli lipsynching had been going on behind our backs.
That's right, a brass beefeater band banged out Blur's 'Parklife' at some point, but Blur were too busy banging out 'Parklife' in Hyde Park to be there. This remined me a lot of hearing Andrew Causer play 'Funky Town' on a clarinet during fourth form music class. Some songs should never be played on wind instruments. 'Parklife' is one of them.
I'd heard a rumour that Kate Bush was going to sing, but alas, it turned out to be just that. The Olympics DJ did play 'Running Up That Hill' and for a second I was terrified the whiny nasal lead singer of Placebo was going to sing it, but thankfully he didn't. Lots of people built a tower out of boxes. Eddie McGuire said each box represented an Olympic event but I didn't believe him. He also kept blethering on about how, 'just one year ago London was on fire from race riots and the race riots were setting London on fire and the Olympics have solved the race riots and put the fire out because there were race riots a year ago and isn't it amazing how just one year later there's no race riots and everyone who could afford the thousand pound ticket to be here was having a fabulous time, no matter what race they were and nobody was rioting and there were no fires, except the Olympic flame, but that's meant to be there and...oooh look, there's an Australian athlete texting.'
Yoko remastered 'Imagine' and let us see some footage of John she'd kept in her closet for years as lots of people made John's face. Then George Michael turned up. Now, I love George Michael. I've got Wham's greatest hits on vinyl and follow him on Twitter and everything. I've even blogged about him. He nearly died in Austria so full credit to him for putting in the hard yards and making a good fist of 'Freedom '90'. The Olympics Audiovisual monitor even projected the word 'FREEDOM' onto the audience so everyone could sing along. I think because George hadn't been on stage for a while the occasion got the better of him and instead of going for a lie down he let rip with his new single 'White Light'. George wrote and sang 'Careless Whisper', one of the best songs ever with one of the best lyrics ever, 'guilty feet have got no rhythm'. Unfortunately 'White Light' is no 'Careless Whisper', and half way through George was obviously feeling guilty and started dancing unrhythmically. Like this.
Then he got all 'Walk Like An Egyptian' on it.
Then I couldn't take anymore and went to the loo.
When I came out there was a young man singing an old song on a Vespa. I was scared Sting might appear 'cos he was in Quadrophenia, but he was too busy making sure his orchestra was bigger than George's. Then the Olympics DJ played some David Bowie, but Bowie was a no-goey, so they got Kate Moss in as a last minute replacement. Kate appears in George's 'White Light' video, but after seeing George's dance moves wisely left him to his own devices. Annie Lennox or Bjork sang a song on a pirate ship and then Prince Harry sang 'Wish You Were Here' while George Michael tried to slip unnoticed out of the stadium on a tight-rope.
By now I was losing interest and stroking the cat. Russell Brand did something odd while some odd old guy pretended to play a Gemini CD Mixer in a big octopus. A woman sang, "It's not about the money money money", while being driven round and round in a Rolls Royce, and The Spice Girls sang, "La La La La La La La La La, La La La La La La La, La La La La La La La La La, La La La La La La La", on the top of some Priscillaed up black cabs. The guy with the really nasal voice from Placebo finally appeared and did a passable Liam Gallagher impersonation, before Eric Idle got everyone singing 'Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life'. This was so far the musical highlight of the evening, although it was quickly topped by the genius idea of projecting Freddie Mercury having an 80's Wembley sing-star battle with the crowd. This bit was genuinely moving, and proved beyond doubt that even though he's been dead for 20 years, nobody can work a stadium like Farrokh Bulsara. They even slipped in the 'fuck you' at the end I think. Here's the full video if you're interested.
Great stuff! On the home stretch now. I think I've forgotten Muse but who cares. Brian May had gone very Grey and wore a jacket with badgers and corgis on it. There were some speeches, Boris waved a flag, some guy who looked like a vampire said 'well done', the Brazilians danced and swept and then a Robbie-less Take That sang the Olympic flame into submission. The Real Who sang 'My Generation' and 'Baba O'Riley', which was great. I wished they'd done this one though. What a tune.
And then, with a billion quids worth of fireworks it was all over. Well done London. Well done Dick Smith. Well done everyone.
My body is a wonderland the harborer of a governmentally approved chronic illness, so I'm entitled to a complimentary flu vaccination every year. I always feel a little smug when I go to get my steroids to inhale, snort and smear, and end up getting injected with a nearly dead pathogen for free. It's not as good as being a member of the Koru Club, but pretty close. The doctor always tells me to wait for 15 minutes just in case I turn into a fly, however I usually loiter longer to parade my free wee white plaster on my shoulder to those poor unfortunates who aren't blessed with a chronic illness.
My free flu jab has kept me flu free for as long as I can remember. Until this year. This year I may as well have been injected with the tears of a honeybee for all the good it did. I didn't help myself by flying Jetstar return to Sydney either. Jetstar didn't help me, or the honeybee, by cancelling the flight and rescheduling me onto an international flight...to Sydney...from Melbourne, without telling me that I'd have to go through customs and would require a passport. To go from Melbourne. To Sydney. The orange Jetstar lady in the orange Jetstar uniform laughed at my New Zealand drivers license, and in desperation I began yanking out any Australian card I had in my wallet; my Commonwealth Bank Debit Card, my Myki, my Yarra Libraries Your Library Membership card, my Woolworths Everyday Rewards card, my Ikea Family card entitling me to free coffee and meatballs without needing to make a purchase, and finally my Medicare card. The orange lady stopped cackling, snatched my Medicare card, and scuttled off for what seemed like an eternity. A Jetstar eternity equals seven human eternities so it was a really long eternity. She returned and said, "Yeah, well, ya might make it thru love, I dunno really, give it a crack, it works for kids sometimes." The man at passport control looked very dubious about the whole sordid affair. His hand hovered over his stamp while I pretended to be a seven year old boy and wet myself. "Fair enough," he finally said, and stamped me through. I celebrated by doing a Jetstar jump when I got to Sydney in my Australian bikini.
What a palava. New Zealand invented the pavlova. I couldn't even buy any duty free. The plane was like one of those scenes near the end of a contagion film like Contagion, where everyone is miserable and coughing and wishing they were dead and not flying Jetstar. The coughs of a million budget airline passengers recirculated through the fetid air into my chronically ill lungs, and within days my free vaccination waved a white blood cell and gave up the fight.
My big mistake was getting the jab in New Zealand. This protected me from the NZ flu, but in hindsight didn't stand a chance against the infinitely more confident, aggressive and larakinish Australian strain. The NZ flu is an understated, self-deprecatory one that has a good crack at you, but doesn't want to cause too much puss. The Aussie strain screams 'Oi, Oi Oi!', smashes you in the head, drinks all your fluids and shits itself in your lungs. Its speed and tenacity were terrifying. I was in bed for a day and a half and spent the rest of the week trying to evacuate snot and phlegm on the minute every minute. I've been coughing like a Jetstar passenger for weeks, although I can now scull a whole bottle of Robitussen while suppositing Neurofen Zavance, so it wasn't a complete waste of time.
It also gave me a good excuse to watch some Olympics. None of my opening ceremony predictions were correct, however I was very pleased to see some Chinese, Korean and Indonesian women had a good crack at BADminton before they all got kicked out. It's been interesting living in a different country while the games are on to monitor the mood of the populous as their athletes get second. This picture sums up the difference between here and the homeland rather well.
Created by clever Jonathan Louis Fox.
I'm just hoping New Zealand wins a second gold before Australia does to put us ahead on the medals table. It will probably mean they shut their borders and deport us all, but it'll be worth it.
The Five Rings of the Apocalypse are almost upon us and London is in a frenzy of painting rings on ring roads and installing missiles to shoot down anyone eating fries that haven't passed through the happy anus of Ronald McDonald. The ring road rings designate Olympic Lanes, allowing athletes to get to their places of running, tossing and leaping faster by forcing locals to drive their cars on two wheels like the Dukes of Hazzard. On the footpath.
Picture nicked from @theJeremyVine
I love the Olympics. Once when I was young and the Earth was 1984, I drew a beautiful poster for the Los Angeles Olympics instead of a poster about Jesus. It was during Scripture Class at Northcote Primary School, and the religious man who turned up once a week to fill us with red wine and the body of Christ thought it was quite good, although he was very old and may have thought my picture of the guy who flew into the opening ceremony on a jet pack was actually Jesus.
Not Jesus.
Jesus.
A guy on a Jet Pack! London will have a tough time topping that. Danny Boyle's directing it so hopefully it will be lots of Scottish people pretending to inject heroin, and lots of British people pretending to die of a mysterious virus, and lots of Indians pretending to become millionaires, and lots of Americans pretending to cut their own arms off, and then they all work together to re-ignite a giant dying sun disguised as the Olympic flame. Then Gary Barlow shoots the tax money he's avoided paying out of a huge cannon, and the Spice Girls shoot Posh Spice out of a cannon, and Daniel Craig catches her unless a gust of wind blows her away. Finally Underworld play their hit 'Born Slippy', cunningly changed to 'Born Zippy', and Zippy from Rainbow flies in on a Jet Pack and joins Sir Paul McCartney in a rousing sing-a-long of Mull of Kintyre, with every audience member playing complementary McDonalds bagpipes for the final chorus. I can't wait.
I'd love to compete in the Olympics, but unfortunately I'm rubbish at all the things you need to be really good at to compete in the Olympics. This is obviously discriminatory and I'm surprised nothing has been done about it. It's all running and rowing and cycling and swimming and jumping and throwing and lifting and shooting and beach volleyball. The only remotely athletic things I've ever done are punching myself in the face with a hand-weight during a boxing class, and nearly shitting myself during a yoga class.
So, I have made a list of five new events I think I'd be quite good at that should be included in the 2016 Olympics in...somewhere
Synchronised Sinking. I'm an OK swimmer, a terrible diver but I'm great at sinking. After bombing off a high board, both competitors must sink in perfect unison, ideally hitting the bottom at exactly the same time. Extra points for a big splash and if your togs fall off on impact.
Horse Whispering. I've ridden a horse once in my life and that is enough. I am very good at flapping my lips like a horse and dressing up like one though. This event involves two people dressed as a pantomime horse. Real Equestrian athletes are blindfolded and competitors must try to fool them into thinking they are a real horse by making horse noises and eating sugarcubes. The most realistic horse wins gold and the chance to compete in the Dressage.
Gymnastics: The Rommel Horse. Scheduled after the previous event to put the rear half of the horse through their paces. Two competitors dressed as an equine version of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel must perform an interpretative dance encapsulating his achievements in the North African campaign, while male gymnasts perform circles, scissors and kehrswings on their back.
BADminton. The winners of this event are the most inept at playing badminton. I'm guaranteed a medal.
100m Walk. I'm good at walking but I'm buggered if I'm going to do it for 50 km.
Other possibles include the MC Hammer Throw, where competitors hurl a copy of 'Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em' at MC Hammer until someone hurts him, and the Pole Vault, where competitors must use a very stiff Polish person to propel themselves high into the air.
I hope you all enjoy the Olympics as much as I will. It sounds like the competitors will be having a fantastic time as well, with unlimited free McDonalds, and 100,000 free flavoured condoms that taste exactly like a Quarter Pounder with extra cheese.
I've blogged about KFC before and now it's happening again. A lot has changed since my last KFC inspired post in July 2009. Michael Jackson died, TomKat divorced and a bunch of people discovered a particle of God hiding inside a giant ring underneath Switzerland. I tried to feel clever by watching the live announcement of this discovery but ended up feeling annoyed by the lackluster state of their PowerPoint slides.
Some pedantic font-Nazis pooh poohed the physicists for using the Collingwood of fonts Comic Sans, but people who get foamy and fisty about a typeface need to take a good hard look at themselves in a glasshouse with a black kettle. The font isn't the issue, it's the text. The physicist reads the text aloud so it doesn't need to be in the slide. The slide should have an exciting image to support what is being read. I'll whip something up now.
But back to the chicken. Today I came across this article detailing the details of KFC's intention to introduce self-service kiosks to their house of chicken emporiums. Here's a picture of some lucky French people ordering their deux pouletspièce etpaquettrimestrepuces using nothing but pokey digits and a greasy screen.
I'm no French speaker but those words above their heads look suspiciously like speed and attitude and ici. By using Google Translate I can tell you they translate to speed and attitude and here. Having ordered a metric-tonne of KFC in my lifetime, I can honestly say the last thing I want when ordering my guilt-gobble is attitude, and the first thing I want is speed. Here. Ordering KFC is like buying condoms, the less human interaction the better. They also taste quite similar...apparently. The French have had these Automatic Poulet Machines (APM) for years, lucky bâtards. I've studied this picture for a while and the slots don't look big enough for a breast or thigh, possibly a wing might make it through, chips should be fine although they'd have to come out all nicely lined up.
Restaurant Brands CEO Russell Creedy is a big fan. 'Yes indeedy', said Russell Creedy, 'there's a real needy for speedy feedy for the greedy and the weedy...oooh, there's Shahid Afridi!"
Mr Creedy also explains how the APM enhances customer's in-store experience by, "allowing people to spend more time considering what food items they wanted to buy." I'm sorry Mr Creedy, but surely this defeats the purpose of the speedy? I know what I want. I want a two piece quarter pack if I want to loathe myself for an afternoon, or a three piece quarter pack if I want to hate myself for a day. What I don't want is some arse standing ahead of me pondering the merits of a Giant Feast versus a Super Variety Bucket.
Mr Creedy goes on to say, "They can browse instead of being at a counter face-to-face with somebody who's looking at them saying, 'What would you like?'" I know where you're coming from there Mr Creedy. I fucking hate having to look at someone who's looking at me and rudely asking what I would like. Who do they think they are? Don't look at me. Don't look at me! Don't talk to me! I would like a two piece quarter pack please. DON'T LOOK AT ME! Do you sell condoms?
KFC have spent $2.7 billion dollars with Itchy & Saatchi to come up with the name 'Project Fusion' for this little escapade. Nuclear fusion is the process by which two or more atomic nuclei join together to form a single heavier nucleus, Project Fusion is the process by which you get your fried chicken faster. Auckland's North Shore will be the first lucky suburb to get this incredible technology and then it will be rolled out to other stores once they figure out how to fuse the kiosks with four wheels. Heaven knows when they will reach Australia. Still, in Australia KFC give you those dinky wee moist wipey finger sanitary napkins that are but a distant memory back in NZ. So there.
Exciting times. God particles. Self service chicken dispensers. Fifty shades of grey. What will they come up with next?
There comes a point in crime shows made up of acronyms, place names and 80's rappers where the lead investigator looks at a picture of the crime scene, a picture of the victim, a mug on their desk commemorating the 1937 Hindenburg disaster and a poodle brought in for questioning in relation to a suspicious fire at a grouting factory, and finally make the connections necessary to solve the crime.
'Of course. The victim didn't die of lead poisoning, all those pencils shoved up his nose were a clue he left us in the seconds before he died. His mouth in the shape of a 'NO' and his body in the shape of an 'A' are telling us to remove the A from the lead giving Led, as in Zeppelin. Zeppelin's used hydrogen, a colourless highly flammable gas contained in farts. Unbeknownst to the victim, the murderer had been flooding his home with farts for years and grouting up all his windows. When the murderer realised hydrogen wasn't poisonous he flew into a rage and chewed through a cable. Later that night when the victim switched on his lava lamp it blew his house up. Arrest that poodle.'
I'm temping again at the moment so have a lot of time on my hands to make connections. My hands are dripping with time and my brain with connections in between taking orders for Semi Sculpting Freeze and Shine High Lift Self Styling Peroxide Paste. The connections I've made are terrifying. By continuing to read this you may be putting your own life and ten of your Facebook friends at risk, so I'd advise to stop reading now and go gander at a safe site like this.
Still with me? OK, let's begin.
It is common knowledge that every week a million people move from New Zealand to Australia. This means in a few years there will be nobody left in New Zealand. We all know it's happening and most pundits argue it's due to the increasing Trans-Tasman income gap, warmer weather and the prospect of a reality show about Sally and Jamie Ridge. What nobody is asking is why these things are being allowed to happen. The weather issue is tricky to remedy, but surely it's not that hard to pay people more and take all the funding for 'A Ridge To Nowhere' and make something more entertaining like 'Celebrity Target', where ex-Shortland Street stars sneak into carpet cleaners homes to sniff their undies. The scary truth is these calamities are part of a coordinated attack designed to drive the entire New Zealand population across the ditch as quickly as possible. It is breathtaking in its scope and effectiveness and funded by three immensely powerful people with one hand in their pocket and the other up John Key's bum.
The first and most powerful of the triumvirate is this man.
I'm the king of the world New Zealand!
This man is called James Cameron. He has kept a very low profile and many of you are probably not even aware he exists. Not only is he a deep sea diver and film maker, he is also Canadian. His most recent film was about a giant ship that hit a giant tree and sunk to the bottom of a giant ocean into a land of blue people who live in mushrooms and battle a wizard and his cat. It was called Avatitanicar and made more money than the world had available resulting in the Global Financial Crisis. JC is buying up New Zealand land at an astonishing rate and based on some quick conspiracy extrapolation, will own half of New Zealand by my next birthday.
The second member is this man.
I'm the king of the world Wellington!
His name is Peter Jackson and he is not a deep sea diver, but is a film maker and possibly Canadian. He currently owns all of Wellington and is good friends with John Key and JC. What is most disturbing is that right behind PJ in this photo you can clearly see a gold Terminator waiting to kill any New Zealand actor asking for minimum terms and conditions. Who invented the Terminator? James Cameron did! The connections begin.
The third and most terrifying of the triumvirate is...
I'm the Queen of the world Wanaka!
Shania Twain. She is not a deep sea diver or a film maker but is definitely Canadian. She currently owns 24, 731 hectares of Wanaka paid for by idiots who loved 'Man! I Feel Like A Woman'.
So, we have a puppet Prime Minister being manipulated by at least two Canadians into implementing policies to free up land for them to build giant fortress like lairs filled with mysterious mists. The yellow peril dairy farm buy-up is a red herring planted by fat cats. We have been misled and obfuscated. The final question to ask is...
Why?
The answer came to me while I was keying an order for Moisture Boosting Baby Detangler, and it was so shocking I think I dispatched three 300ml bottles instead of two. JC, PJ and ST are planning to annihilate the human race. Not content with make believe, they intend to make the mother of all snuff end-of-the-world films and Shania will sing as the planet burns. PJ's Weta supercomputer may have already unleashed JC's diabolical Skynet system to render mankind out of existence. Soon they will launch an army of unstoppable James Cameron patented gold O-800 Terminators, or Oscars, armed with Red Digital Cameras to mop up the rest of humanity. JC and PJ will edit the footage in their nuclear bunker editing suites deep under the only place in the world safe from residuals and residual fallout.
I realise this all sounds farfetched but I'm temping so cut me some slack. I'm only meant to be there for two more weeks so it won't last. Next week I shall attempt to make the connection between the moon landing, the Loch Ness Monster and Seal...only if one of James Cameron's Oscars doesn't get me first.
I'm going to see Prince. I doubt he'll see me but I'll see him looking like a spangly speck through my specs at the opposite end of Rod Laver arena on May 30th. It nearly didn't happen. Tickets to this major event went on sale at 9am yesterday and Ticketek confirmed this by telling me tickets were being sold to a major event while refusing to let me buy tickets to their major event every 20 seconds. At 9:20am Ticketek let me in very slowly, and I bounded in at dial-up speed to find the only tickets left were in the Purple Circle and cost $450 each. Admittedly that included a ride on his purple motorbike and a free copy of The Watchtower, but I just couldn't bring myself to love Prince that much. My love for Prince is closer to the colour of Silver Reserve, and those tickets had long gone...or so I thought. Because just as I was about to give up partying like it's 1999 for $99 + booking fee, Prince's diary suddenly freed up and he announced another gig the next night. I wonder who has the audacity to cancel on Prince at such late notice. Maybe he was meant to go door knocking and somebody lost the squiggle badge? Either way it was a miracle for me, and I leapt back into the Ticketek fray naively believing two silver seats would soon be mine. But no, too slow. Much too slow. It was Purple Zone or Purple Reserve Floor or nothing. No Prince for Greg.
I abandoned my computer and cheered myself up by making a cup of Dilmah with lactose and gluten free Almond milk and roughaged it down with some wheat and gluten free muesli and lactose and gluten free Almond milk. Then I stroked the cat and washed my hands afterwards just in case I stroked myself. Feeling much better about everything I returned to my computer and saw I wasn't the only one having to resort to gluten free gluttony and pussy stroking to get over the disappointment of missing out on The Squiggles. I hadn't been that sad since Robyn pulled out of Stereosonic and The Feelers pulled out of a parking space without getting crushed by a double decker bus or ten ton truck.
And then it happened. It was truly miraculous. Not quite as truly miraculous as Prince knocking on my door wanting to talk about Jesus and show me his purple circle, but pretty damn close. For some unfathomable reason I returned to pick the Ticketek scab and there it was, Prince had found himself at a loose end on Wednesday May 30th and booked another gig. I raced through the screens and before I could say in France a skinny man died of a big disease with a little name, I was the proud owner of two seats in Area UPP, Section S32-A, Row OO...Price Category: Silver Reserve! They could be the shittiest seats in a 14,820 capacity arena. How cool is that?
And now while you're doing things like stroking your cat while watching Seal on The Voice on May 30th, I'll be squinting at Prince from a distance and jiggling to hits like Little Red Corvette, Raspberry Beret, and the one about how difficult it is to put the top on a bottle of cream. Jealous much?
One of the great things about living in Melbourne is being surrounded by amazing street art. A few weeks ago I went on a street art tour operated by the appropriately named Melbourne Street Art Tours, and some of the stuff we saw was pretty awe-inspiring...none more so than this.
It was created over a couple of days by a group of French graffiti artists called Da Mental Vaporz. It's very big and very awesome and gets even better close-up.
I especially love this section featuring two moles tumbling from the dinosaur's turf hamstring.
What I don't love is dealing with Google's horrid system for loading pictures onto my blog, so let's see if embedding a video of the graffosaurs creation will be easier. It's not too long, well worth a watch and has a bit of tilt-shift technique, where by tilting your shifter you magically make things look all miniature and model railway like. It's very bloody clever and if you haven't seen any before go here and have a fresh pair of undies handy. Actually no, don't do that, click on the video below first and then go there.
OK, hopefully Google will let me load one more picture to finish. This delightful hippo is lurking down an alleyway off Gertrude Street in Fitzroy. I have named her Gertrude.
I'm in the middle of trying to write a musical. I'm not writing the music bit of the musical, just the 'al' bit, which in the musical world is called 'the book'. I'm writing all the stuff people say between the songs and some of the words of the songs, and then someone else who has trained in musical theatre in New York and can actually read music is writing the music. My co-writer is more than happy to listen to my musical suggestions, although so far my only contribution has been to suggest a melody that later turned out to be 'The Gambler' by Kenny Rogers. I blame my parents. They loved a bit of Kenny Rogers and thrashed the phonograph with him, John Denver, Nana Mouskouri, James Last, and Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass all through my formative years, so it's no surprise Kenny's been incubating inside me like a silver beardy alien just waiting to burst out and embarrass me in front of my collaborator.
I used to love a good musical. Some of the first shows I was involved in were musicals put on by the St Joseph's Light Operatic Society. I'm not sure who St Joseph was but he obviously loved his light opera. Here's a picture of him in The Sound of Music.
The resemblance to Julie Andrews is uncanny, although he could have shaved. Here he is with a pipe wrench in West Side Story.
Bit of a dodgy prop but you work with what you've got. Finally here he is in the role he's best known for, Joseph, with his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat was the first musical that started to really get on my tits. I think Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote it as a high school musical before High School Musical and boy did he nail it. There's only so many years a young man can be forced to sing, 'I closed my eyes, drew back the curtain, AH UH AHHH, to see for certain....AH AHHHHHH, what I thought I knew', before his thoughts turn to self harm and Silver Dollar Vodka brewed in Kaiapoi. And the line makes no sense. So, this young man thinks Andrew Lloyd Webber is outside his window furiously masturbating, but to make sure of it he draws back his curtains to have a look...with his eyes closed. You can't blame him, but he still won't see for certain what he thought he knew. Not content with inflicting horror on high school students the globe over, ALW decided to prolong the agony by letting rip with this little gem in 2007.
Holy Hannah. It was called 'Any Dream Will Do' and kept viewers gripped for 9 weeks to see which boy Andrew would choose to handle his big part. ALW was looking for a young man, "who's a bit of a Justin Timberlake, tiny touch of the Michael Jacksons and a bit of the Jude Laws", and in the only disturbing episode I saw was sweating like a sea bass on heat as young men descended into his dungeon studio in nothing but loincloths for a bit of one on one mentoring.
Andrew Lloyd Webber waiting for his next Joseph
But before Joseph I was really into musicals. I sang 'Dites-Moi' in South Pacific and 'This Was A Real Nice Clambake' in Carousel, even though I didn't and still don't have any idea what a clambake is. I was the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz in Form One, and the lead in some bizarre Form Two show called Hunter's Gold that was set in Central Otago and ripped off all the songs from Paint Your Wagon. I may have been the first and last person to ever sing 'Wand'rin Star' in the register of a choir boy. I was Oliver on alternate nights in Oliver! for The North Canterbury Musical Society, Bugsy Malone in Bugsy Malone, and the retarded boy who got killed at the end of the first half in The Doctor and The Devils, which wasn't a musical but probably should have been.
I went and saw Cats! in Sydney with my mother when I was about 13 and loved it. I even wrote a puff piece gushing about it for the school rag. I saw Le Mis and loved it as well. All the musicals I'd been in I loved. And then we started singing Every bloody Dream Will bloody Do every bloody year and I decided musicals were a bit shit. It didn't help I went and saw some touring production of Chess and got sick as a dog half-way through while the Arbiter forgot his lines. Even just watching this makes me sweat and shake and go all foetal. By the time an international musical makes it to New Zealand all the good people have long since scarpered, and we end up witnessing a bunch of bored understudies dance around Ray Woolf. I finally saw Phantom, thankfully with free tickets, and the best part was the dry ice.
The final nail in my musical coffin came while I was living in London. My parents were coming to visit and wanted to see a musical. They'd seen all the usual West End suspects, so I booked three tickets to see a show that had been getting rave reviews called Passion, by Stephen Sondheim. It had Tonys coming out of its arse and Sondheim had written the lyrics for West Side Story which has lots of finger clicking in it, so it was bound to be good. The curtain went up and my parents and I were greeted with two people shagging and singing a song that sounded nothing like 'Something's Coming'. It was all highly uncomfortable and I couldn't make any sense of it and there was no finger clicking. My parents bravely stuck with it to the very end and we made a pact never to speak of it again. I'm sure it will cost me some of my inheritance.
And now I'm helping write a musical of my own. I can't tell you what it's about, but it's going to have lots of dry ice and finger clicking.
Many years ago I was walking past a strip of bars in Christchurch known collectively as The Strip. Every time I went back to Christchurch the names of these bars had changed. Celsius had become Fahrenheit, Liquidity, Solidity and Coyotes, Coyotes Bar and Restaurant. The one constant was their horribleness. They were horrible places filled with horrible men trying to put their horrible penises into horribly drunk young girls.
If they were unsuccessful they would stagger en mass, like a tribe of chambrayed Neanderthals to Cashel Mall, to put their horrible fists into the faces of anybody who dared challenge their manlihood by glancing in their general direction. I hardly ever ventured near The Strip on Friday and Saturday nights, however when I did inadvertently stumble into the land of chambray and spew, I felt relatively safe due to the white flag perched on my nose. I have no idea what goes on in the minds of men who like to hit other men just in case other men hit on them and they kind of like it, but I'm pretty sure they are hard wired with two conditions that must be met before the angriness is meted out.
1. The man must not be woman.
2. The man must not be wearing glasses.
You'd hope there would be more, like 'The man must not be lying on the ground', or 'The man must not be over 80', or 'The man must not be already having the shit kicked out of him by three other men', but unfortunately this doesn't seem to be the case. Glasses unmaketh the man. I don't know what we spec-wearers become in the drunken eyes of Mr Fisty, but it's something infuriatingly unpunchable. They may push us out of the way as they travel along their vector of violence, but as long as your glasses don't fall off when you hit the ground, you'll live to not fight another day.
Which is why, many years ago while walking past The Strip, a chambrayed chap pulled his hazy gaze away from the rump of some 16 year old lamb dressed as mutton, to glower at me in my 508's, purple Mossimo top, terrible bowl cut and glasses, and not punch me. I could see he wanted to. He was slowly expanding, rising and falling from his seat as if his angry anus was letting off a staccatoish series of furious farts, but the two pieces of prescription plastic over my eyes were an invisible force field that kept him at bay. I smiled, smug in my short-sightedness. He squinted and shook and slathered and slurred, "The library's that way mate", before returning to perv and his pint.
Which is where I am now. Not the Christchurch library. That's still in the Red Zone and The Strip is long gone, except for Coyote's which managed to stay erect thanks to a two inch coating of spew and jizz. I'm in the Melbourne City Library, which for a city of four million people is surprisingly small, although it does have a piano that you can tinkle on as long as you're Grade 5 or above and the person playing it is into that sort of thing. I love the library. It's full of books and stuff. There's also lots of computers, and yesterday I booked a computer with a scanner to scan something at home on my computer because I don't have a scanner at home. Here in the silent reading room they even have little desks with power points so not only can you read a book, you can plug your computer in. It's a bit of a hassle lugging my old desktop PC here on the tram, and sometimes it takes two trips because the monitor's quite heavy, but it's worth it. To top it all off they have wireless internet, so I can book the scanner with my computer and then watch all the angry people who want to use the scanner but can't because it's booked, even though I'm not using it.
Not having a library has been hard for the people of Christchurch who wear glasses. Not having The Strip has been hard for the people of Christchurch who wear chambray. No books. No booze. No biffo. The things that made the city of my birth great were suddenly no more. Sure, there were suburban libraries and bars and brawls but it wasn't the same. In Cashel Mall on a Friday night, people knew your name as they glassed you; 'Ian!' they'd cry as they clouted you with their bottle of Steiny Pure, and if the bottle didn't break they'd offer you a suck on their stubbie as they put the boot in. The Christchurch Central Library was huge, much bigger than Melbourne's, and it had escalators and scanners and a special area for Margaret Mahy to wear her freaky wig. You don't get that in Bishopdale or Shirley.
In January I went back to Christchurch and along with some very talented friends, put together a show called 'The Complete History of Christchurch Abridged'. We did it in Hagley Park and about 25,000 people saw it. They turned up with food, and rugs and booze and dogs, and they all laughed and cried about their city and all the shit they'd gone through, surrounded by other people who loved the city and had gone through the same shit as them. We were all proud of the show but what made this one special was that in some small way, I think we made a difference. One woman, who had been trapped in a collapsed building for three hours told us this was the first time she had laughed since Feb 22nd 2011. One old fella with tears in his eyes gripped both my hands and just said thank you over and over again. We took the piss out of those in power, we said the things everyone wanted to say, and it was immediate, affecting and alive.
And it was free. So I hope some chambray clad chap suffering from Strip withdrawal came along and had a laugh. And I hope he remembers it in ten years time when I'm walking down Cashel Mall on a Friday night wearing contact lenses.
It must do your head in being in Radiohead and not being Thom Yorke. Not only does Thom get to be greedy with extra letters in both of his names, he's also the only one anybody recognises as being in Radiohead, except perhaps for the tall skinny one called Jonny I think, who leaps in super slow-motion like a girl into a carvan in the video for Street Spirit (Fade Out). Stuttery, squinty, winky Thom IS Radiohead, and with one doleful squinty wink of his sad glad-eye, all doors open and impediments evaporate. Imagine being Jonny Whats-his-name leaping all slow-motioniny through the doors of The Ivy and being told before you hit the ground that you can't come in because you don't have a booking and nobody knows who you are. Jonny would press his slow-mo-nose up to the glass and inside Thom would be scoffing and squinting with Damon Albarn, Richard Ashcroft, Debbie Harry, Chris Martin, Chrissy Hynde, Mark Knopfler, Nick Cave, Jarvis Cocker, Tom Petty, Trent Reznor, Sting, Gwen Stefani, Michael Stipe, Jon Bon Jovi, Florence Welch and Huey Lewis. Michael Hutchence would be hanging around somewhere as well. Jonny would plead with the maitre d and perhaps play the 'rain down' bit of Paranoid Android that he wrote on an ondes martenot but to no avail. He would be tossed in slow-motion back onto the street in winter with an empty tummy and nothing to do but breath on the glass and write rude messages to his lead singer, like 'Thom Dorke!, or 'At least I can read music!', or 'Ronan Keating thinks you're a muppet!'. The rest of Blur, The Verve, Blondie, Coldplay, The Pretenders, Dire Straits, The Badseeds, Pulp, The Heartbreakers, Nine Inch Nails, The Police, No Doubt, REM, Bon Jovi, The Machine and The News, INXS and JD Fortune would all be doing the same and the window would look like an angry version of the wall outside Abbey Road studios, except be on glass and written with angry fingers in angry breath and nothing to do with The Beatles except for the fact that Radiohead like The Beatles can sell out Shea Stadium in less time than it takes Jonny to leap into a caravan...much less time.
That would do your head in as well. I've done a few shows and one of the absolute joys is waiting for that email everyday to reveal you've sold no tickets. The emails usually come though at around 5pm and I'd be circling and wagging like a laptop dog, salivating and slobbering and ready to tear the email open with my teeth to reveal the rows of '0's for all four shows in a 30 seat venue with no airconditioning and a much bigger poster for the show after yours above the urinals. The disappointment never lasted long and only led to an dance exponential increase in expectation, hoping against hope the next one would contain a mystical '1'. 0,0,0,0,0,0.....1! Never has binary been so erotic and exciting. Someone somewhere has spent $16 on a concession ticket to my site-specific one man show featuring an ear-splitting burst of pop music, defecation and aggressive masturbation.
Radiohead don't get to experience any of that. Thom just gets on Facebook and sends a message to his friends like, 'Hey guys, doing a world tour. Come to my show!!!! We'll have a drink after', or 'Creep has had over 23 million views, that's almost viral (I reckon). Come to the show and see stuff in for reals life yo!', or 'Hey World - Looking for some late night madness? Come along to the biggest stadium nearest to you. They'll be performances by heaps of artists. Probably quite a bit of drinking and it's only a gold coin/koha for entry.', and before Thom can poke Jonny they've sold 1.9 trillion tickets and 2.8 million FB groups have been set up asking for extra shows or whether they can possibly make it down to Invercargill 'cos there's heaps of Radiohead fans down there and they'd be sure to show Thom and the other guys a good time.
Social networking. My old flatmate Michael Legge tweeted about the death of someone he made up and then The Guardian did a story about it because it was trendy. I was there in the 90's when Michael put his knob in the mouth of his girlfriend's dog to cheer her up...his girlfriend, not the dog, but that happened before Twitter so nothing appeared in The Guardian about it. In the library where I'm writing this, I saw Amanda Palmer and her hubby Neil Gaiman perform and read to over 400 people and the only advertising they did was a couple of tweets. Just amazing. Here's a pic of the concert.
Can you see me? Just treat it like a game of Where's Greggy? Given up yet? OK, I'll put you out of your misery. I'm the one on the right checking my emails on my phone to see if anybody has purchased a ticket to my one-man show that I wasn't even doing. What an arse. Who goes to a ninja gig and checks their emails on their phone? If I had been tweeting about being at a gig I heard about via a tweet that might have been cooly ironic, but no, I was...bloody hell, the guy next to me in the supposedly silent room of the library has put on headphones and is listening to The Party Rock Anthem at an eardrum piercingly loud volume while he sends his emails. Who does that? The whole bloody library has free Wifi, why can't he FRO and go and blast his LMFAO SOFP? Oooooh...maybe's he's been reading over my shoulder as he's just petulantly slammed his laptop shut and stalked out of the room. He's left his Macbook here. If it was a PC I could change his screensaver to read something hilarious like, 'You're a dork', or 'I can hear your shitty music', or 'Greggy thinks you're a muppet', but Apples are Greek to me.
Where was I? I don't know. This whole post is rambling. Oh hell, he's come back so I'm going to finish here without checking for typos and spelling eras. I didn't even get to talk about what I've been doing for the last few months instead of writing insightful crap like this. Have you missed me?
It was a tough choice as to the posters I would have to envelop, but after seconds of deep contemplation I decided Turbonegro and Spiritualized could cope with the marketing hit. I've hyperlinked to their shows as a small token of my remorse, and I think Spiritualized may have already sold out. Now it was time to break out the Elmers and get marketing!
I kept expecting Bono to turn up with a big poster, but he must have been too busy evading tax. I pressed on pressing on posters and before you could say, "Over me and over you, stuck together with God's glue, it's going to get stickier too', I was done!
