Farewell Big Pointy Building

A bit of an era started around here. Alas, I'm wandering again and The Dreaded One has also left The Big Pointy Building. Times, they are a changin'.

Off doofing this weekend. Celebrating a wunth anniversary of adventures with a not so new person. Going to dance in a forest at Dragon Dreaming. I think I'm going to go as some kinda cyber Viking.

I think The Dreaded One will be missed at The Big Pointy Building. But you know, new stuff ahead.

More Adventures With Faux Chefing

With regard to faux chefing, things have been quiet on the Big Pointy Building front so I've joined an agency and I've been a chef-for hire. (I was going to mirror the gun-for-hire thing but no chef tool sounds cool. A whisk-for-hire? A spatula-for-hire? A wooden spoon-for-hire?).

Anyway, I've picked up a bit of work and it's been interesting. I'm out of my comfort zone and I'm having to bluff for real now. It's okay at The Big Pointy Building because, as Leonard Cohen says, everybody knows.

But these new people, they don't know that I am not a chef, but rather than being up front about it, I am now willfully acting like I am a chef. I have to. These places are hiring freelance chefs, so I have to be a freelance chef.

My life of deception was going along fine until this week I was hired for six days by a large, very serious catering company... who from henceforthwithforth shall be refered to as The Very Serious Catering Company (VSCC).

The VSCC is located... oh it's located everywhere, but the venue I'm booked for is big to say the least. This is major league, kick arse stuff, and on the first day I'm running not quite late but sort of kind of getting into the red zone. It's a hike to get out there, and this massive stadium... it just feels empty this time of the morning. And I cannot for the fuck of it find this secret underground security entrance I'm supposed to enter through.

By blind luck and tippping my head in different directions to read the You Are Here bit on the map, I manage to find the underground entrance. I buzz for security. Affable security guy gets me to sign in, gives me my security wrist band.

"There ya go," Affable security Guy says, nodding me on.

"Right. Thanks - but go where?"

"Oh you've never been here before? Right. Haha. 'K. Go out here, hang a right, blahblahblahblah. Blahdy blah blah where you should find Bay 16."

I head off, by now deep into the red zone of being late, without technically as yet being late, and it quickly becomes apparent that the little underground road I'm following is the circumference of the stadium. I've had to go halfway around the damn thing on ground level to get here, now it feels like I'm walking the other half to form a complete circle.

I find Bay 13 and Bay 12 and it appears that I've been heading in the wrong direction. Fuckity fuck. I head back and back and pass the security entrance and keep going and going until I see some cleaners on a golf buggy and I ask them where Bay 16 is.

"Oh, it's back that way... it's a long way but you have to go back around...

You get the idea. By now I am definitely going to be late, I just hope it's not going to stand out too much.

Bay 13, it turns out, is the bay I should have been looking for. This is the catering entrance. I'f I'd just walked a bit further along I would have seen evidence of catering, like the signs on the doors saying things like 'Catering inside'.

I see a loading dock guy with a chef's apron on and ask him where I have to go. He takes me inside and it's the biggest, shiniest kitchen I have ever seen. I smack my gob. Seriously. My God.

Loading dock guy hands me a white frilly thing and tells me I have to have it. It's a strip of frilly paper. I have no idea what it is. I ask what it is. He smirks and pulls it apart and I realise I have to start the chef deception thing. I go oh riiight, and pull the frilly thing apart and put it on my head, hoping that it is indeed a hair net.

The guy takes me through these massive, empty kitchens to a couple of doors while I briefly wonder where the other chefs are. He send me through the doors and into the middle of a room of attentive chefs, maybe 60 of them. They all look impeccable in their chef whites and they listen to head chef concluding a rundown of the event as well as asking some pop questions about food handling.

They have all turned to look at me as I quietly sneak into the room dressed in my cargo pants and cammo hoodie, my kit slunbg over my shoulder. I squat down at the back of the room because there are no chairs left, and I listen to head chef go into so much detail about his demands and expectations and I realise that I am possibly very deep in the shit now. It feels very much like those dreams you may have had where you turn up for school not wearing any pants.

But this is so very real. Time slows as I wonder, really, what the fuck am I doing here. The room is so white with all this chef gear that it may as well have been a flamingo that just walked into the room. I think very seriously about bailing as soon as the meeting is over because I am clearly in over my head.

And then I wonder if I'm even in the right place. Maybe there's more than one catering facility at this massive venue. There must be. Maybe I should be at Bay 16 after all.

Back in the days when my insecurities fully had their way with me I would have been crushed. But mostly robust me was howling with laughter on the inside. It was too perfect a fuck up. But I also wondered, how the hell did everyone know about this meeting and that they had to be changed into their chef gear? Why was I the only one who didn't know?

Found out later in the day that it happens to a lot of newbies. The agency just doesn't know or doesn't bother to tell first timers.

Anyway, it was an up and down day but I seem to have gotten away with it. For two days now. Two down, four more to go.

The Game

They have the damndest cloud formations in Melbourne. And this one perfectly describes the way I'm not feeling right now after my most recent game of Make The Writer Write For Free. (Ironically, if the cloud formation had been Grumpy it would have made me very happy. Alas...)

I got the opportunity of interviewing the guy in the previous post. Why wouldn't you want to interview him? He looks like a cack. I think he'd be a lot of fun. And yeah, high profile interviews like this look good on your resume. And they're usually a crapload of fun to write.

So I approached a glossy I've written for before and they expressed interest but said they'd have to get back to me because they might be able to use an existing story from a sister mag overseas which they'd get for free.

I can understand it from their point of view but I just think it sucks that a local version won't be written - at least not for that mag by me.

Way the game works though, I bet if I said , "Look. I really want to do this story and I think it would be really good. In fact you know what? If you're getting it for free anyway and I want to do a local version so badly, why don't I waive any fee and do it for free?"

I'll bet they'd say, "Ooh. Hadn't thought about that. Hmm. It would be better to have a local one. And it would be good for you having someone like him added to your credits. Okay. All right then. Go for it."

Thing is, I can't do that. I can't write for free anymore and I still don't get why writers should be expected to write for free. If I was loaded I'd probably do it because when you're rich I imagine experience means more than making more dollars. But I'm not loaded. I'm still a struggling freelance writer who has to pay other humans to do stuff I need or want them to do for me... why is there this expectation of writers to write for the love alone? You do it in the beginning to get the runs on the board, but there comes a point when you have to stop doing it for free.

Magazine I was talking to last year, they looked through my book of features and said, "Well clearly you're above writing for a byline."

And I appreciated that. It was a bit of respect being shown. Downside is that like so many mags, they're cash strapped so no matter how much they liked my work, they haven't the budget to pay for it. The next person to see them was probably dead keen to write for the byline.

But to put 'cash strapped' into perspective... were not exactly talking about big bickies. Generally we're talking about a few cents a word. Less than a dollar a word to phone (often overseas), record, transcribe, shape a story and hopefully make it something the reader is going to get a kick out of. It's quite a bit of work with maybe a little bit of talent involved all for less than the monthly budget of office Tim Tams and teabags... if it's a biggish office with people who eat lots of Tim Tams and drinks lots of tea.

And we'd be grateful for that and have a bit of dignity about it all and maybe be able to continue doing it instead of, I dunno, faux chefing to pay for all the services we use.

And yeah I know, from a mag's point of view add up all the stories and if you can get them for nothing why not and it all adds up and cutting costs etc etc.

But from my point of view, it sucks and doesn't exactly make me feel like that really quite astonishing cloud formation in the picture.

More of The Game tomorrow as I hit up other magazines and maybe even try to convince the one I spoke to today to pay for a local story.

And maybe even go oh fuck it - I'll do it for nothing more than the experience and the byline.

NYE At The Big pointy Building... Fast Forward, Please

New Year's Eve At The Big Pointy Building in a few hours... I just want to make it through the day and out the other end to join friends for drinks on new Year's Day. Check out this pic from three years ago. Three years? Feels like much longer.

I just read a couple of other posts from around that time. Does anyone's life turn out the way they expected it to?

Freudian Slip At FIFA 2008

Big catering function. Lots of agency chefs, some good, some wankers. It's just the way it is. The good ones, they are just obvious because they Do The Fucking Job. Others are just idiots. But the idiots try, don't they? They scream and yell and forget that we are all here to get the job done. They go into meltdown when the pressure is on though. Pretty damned funny.

The heat is on. This is a world class event with... oh all right - it's those wankers from FIFA. My God, what a bunch of tossers. It's soccer, for fuck sake... you are just a committee deciding the rules of a game played by a bunch of blokes chasing a ball around a big green oblong... you are not Norse Gods. Such wankers.

But this chef, this chef.

I'm sweating because it's intense, this dessert, and we must get it out there and we're behind and oh fuck me it's all so tight and of all of The Big Events, this may be the Big Daddy of them all.

And this chef who is trying to stamp authority over everything, he walks over to me as I'm dressing the desserts that are about to go out and all red-faced and sinking in deep over his head, he stamps his authority by asking, "Have all these desserts been cross-dressed?"

I pause and don't even bother to laugh because this is too funny. I just think to myself, what the fuck are you into?

Do I look good in this silky Freudian slip?

Señor Aubergine

Mostly when I pull 10 to 15 hour days Faux Chefing at The Big Pointy Building, it's so busy I can't remember what I tell people my real name is. Other times... rare times... it's apparently a little less busy.

Then again, there are those times after long insomniac nights and longer days when an eggplant with arms really does leap right out of its vegie box and say, "Heeeey... I am Señor Aubergine who likes very much the tango dance..."

The Chill Factor

As a writer, one of the ways I make a living is by masquerading as a chef. It’s often a stressful environment but the only way to deal with a stressful situation is to be chilled about the whole thing. Get the job done properly, sure, but do it calmly. Being a stress-head just isn’t a good look. Stress-heads get this whole arm-flapping thing going. They run around with neck veins and forehead veins bulging doing and saying ridiculous things while the rest of us stand there scratching our heads and wondering what the fuck their problem is because generally speaking, millions of people are not going to die during the course of this perfectly presented meal, no matter what kind of shit is going down behind the kitchen door.

I’m looking after a small function. I’ve got my shit together with about 40 minutes to kill before the function starts. I am chilled, because I am The Chill Master. I am Ice Man. I am The Snow Man... actually Ice Man sounds better. So. I am Ice Man.

Anyway, a call comes through that there's been a stuff up and the function is actually due to start in 10 minutes. The caller is not chilled. He is the embodiment of freak-out, complete with flappy arms and bulging veins, and where my attitude is ‘can-do’, his is ‘ohmygodohmygodwe’reallgonnadie’. He is Freaktard.

I sashay to the function room and set out my kit. Cold canapes are prepped, hot ones to follow shortly. I have minutes to spare. All the time in the world.

“Lookout! Look out!” Freaktard screams as he makes his appearance. It’s his job to set up the drinks and take the platters of food to the guests. “Out of my way! Whoa that was close! Look out!”

He’s wheeled the crate of drinks around the corner at a comical angle and disappeared in a barely-seen streak that carries loose objects in its wake. I scratch my head and wonder what the fuck his problem is.

Soon the kitchen hands arrive with my hotbox full of hot canapes. They have encountered Freaktard on the way and have picked up on his vibe. They do their impression of The Two Stooges as they frantically manouvre the hotbox into the small kitchen the wrong way around, which is the way they do everything anyway. I point out the obvious in my most Zen Master tone and they Mo & Curly Joe the hotbox around and guide it into place. There is not much room in this particular kitchen and I have to tell Curly Joe to stop and plug the hotbox in before wheeling it completely into place. He bends down and starts to unwind the cord.

“Look out! Look out!” Freaktard squeals as he throws himself into the already crowded kitchen. “Hurry up! Hurry up! Push the hotbox in there! Guests arriving shortly! Come on! Come on!”

Fucker is shoulder barging the hotbox into place.

“Freaktard,” I say in an ubercool and soothing tone, “please stop pushing. You’re squishing Curly Joe.”

“What? Oh. Well. Hurry up hurry up! I’ve got an emergency to deal with here!”

I help the very confused and now thin looking kitchen hand from behind the hotbox as Freaktard mutters something about a dustpan and broom.

Now I haven’t been involved in very many emergencies in my time, but the ones I have been involved in haven’t had anything to do with dustpans and brooms. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever heard of an emergency involving a dustpan and broom. While Freaktard flaps his arms about I think about saying, “Dude – unless you’re about to perform a life-saving procedure with a dustpan and broom, I really don’t think that – technically speaking – it’s an emergency. Certainly not an emergency of such magnitude that the squishing of a hapless kitchen hand is justified.”

But I remain silent. And amused.

And the guests are late because that’s how guests are, and while Freaktard’s heart-rate returns to normal and he deals with his sweat problem, I calmly go about my business of prepping the food, not a hair out of place. Like the food, I am fucking immaculate.

Because I am Ice Man.

Oysters Are No Aphrodisiac

Recently while faux chefing at The Big Pointy Building, a very important function was taking place. There was a lull in service while speeches took place. Chefs and kitchen hands milled about restlessly. Head service peole joined us. Hushed chatter, a few stifled laughs.

Guy in a tux walks through our makeshift kitchen area with a glass of wine, obviously on his way outside for a cigarette or something. I recognise him as the frontman of a pretty well-known Australian band. He spots a platter of leftover oysters sitting on a table I am standing next to.

"Do you mind if I have an oyster?" he asks. "I'm one of the guests."

"Sure," I reply. "Help yourself."

This is the entirely wrong thing to say because the head chef has a rock solid policy of no one eating in the kitchen area, aside from chefs who must try the food from time to time. Wait staff - forget it. Guests? Fuck off back to the guests' area to eat. I'm just a little more casual about it all, which is wrong. I always shrug and figure it's food that's going to waste anyway, someone wants an oyster they can have an oyster. But this is wrong because I am only a faux chef, not a real chef and certainly not the Head Chef.

I turn around to ask Famous Singer if he is performing tonight and see that he has settled his glass on the table and is hunched over the oyster platter eating a lot more than an oyster.

Not good.

I then glance over just as the head chef looks up from the food he is putting the finishing touches on and sees Famous Singer eating the oysters - only he doesn't see a famous guy, he just sees some wanker in a suit making a pig of himself and I realise that a total innocent is about to suffer the consequences of my slackness.

"OI!" Head Chef snarls as he crosses the room. He's a pretty big guy. Forceful presence that can ooze menace. "The fuck do you think you're doing? I don't like you coming into my area and eating my food. Fuck off somewhere else to eat food!"

Famous Singer looks like Withnail in that pub scene when the red-neck local is threatening him and 'I' ("I have a heart condition. If you hit me it's murder...").

"I did ask," Famous Singer simpers and the glowering head chef, "but yes of course I'm so sorry."

Later, there is another lull in proceedings, this time for a musical interlude. It's an all too familiar whining voice with piano accompaniment. We're all a bit stir crazy by this time because we just want to get on with the function and get out of there. We're talking in hushed tones again. At one point there is talk of the singer and Head Chef asks who it is.

"That," replies one of the service people in his very dry Scottish accent, "is the man you were so rude to earlier."

Head Chef is amused. He denies that he was rude, says he just didn't want him to eat in this area and invited him to go elsewhere. There is much stifled sniggering because everyone saw exactly what happened and it was pretty damned funny.

"Even funnier," I say, deciding to fess up, "is that he did actually ask. I said yes and five seconds later you're ripping the poor bastard's head off."

From out in the function area Famous Singer gets a round of applause and starts on another song, much to our dismay.

"Fuck me," Head Chef says. "Where's that platter of oysters? Might take it out there now and say 'here, want an oyster now? Lee says you can have one."

It can be such a stressful job, but it does have it's nice little moments too.

Shagged

Shagged. Just finished two 15 hour reasonably hectic shifts with a five hour nap separating them, so I don't really trust myself to write anything that makes sense. So instead here is my next Grumpy column as it appears in Tsunami mag.

Commencing intense alcohol wind down. Night night... Ooh - Nick Cave special on the telly. Sweet.

Grumpy

Lee Bemrose

Sometimes my working lives are so far apart from each other it does my head in. For example, I am somehow part of the team of chefs at The Sydney Opera House that will be feeding George Bush and his Australian girlfriend John Howard during this fiasco called APEC. Various spook organisations have apparently done background checks on us to ensure that no matter how much we might not like these storm-trooping world leaders, we’re not going to attempt to assassinate them. Brilliant idea, isn’t it? Get some of the world’s most unpopular leaders together in a building that doesn’t exactly blend into the background, shut down the city, close private businesses, commandeer private carparks in the surrounding area, spend squillions on defence so that the leaders of various countries can... can do what exactly? Talk about stuff. Oh yeah – and last night on the news it was announced that the public will be denied access to nearby public areas to watch the massive fireworks display being put on for George & Johnny. I’m glad they get to watch the fireworks in private. It’s so romantic it makes me shit in my pants. With all the security and undercover going on, we keep making nervous jokes about how we should be paid danger money. But you know, I kind of think we should be paid danger money.

At the other extreme, I have this very cool clothing shop called Psydeways. It’s a great little place that pulls all sorts of party people. International visitors drop in to find out about the local scene. I meet like-minded party people all day long, talk about various parties and DJs... you call this work? Also, I get to dress the mannequins and girliquins. And I’m fucking good at it too. As good as any gay guy I know.

Also, the other day a customer came out of the changeroom wearing a cute little top. Checked herself out in the mirror. Turned one way, then the other. She looked hot. She looked pleased, then frowned. She jutted out her perky chest a little and said, “Is the top see-through?” I looked at her breasts but couldn’t tell. So I moved closer and squinted while she jutted... and yeah, it was kinda see-through. “But in a good way,” I reassured her. She looked pleased again and bought the top.

The job with danger money or the one without? Hmm. Think I’ll take both.

Under A Blood Red Moon

Just over one year ago The Dreaded One and I had traveled to Turkey to see a full solar eclipse in a national park just outside Antalya. Tonight there was a full lunar eclipse in Australia that turned the moon red. Not sure if the red business happens during all lunar eclipses, but it was pretty special.

I thought I was going to miss the whole show because I was working, but I managed to slip out through one of the Opera House back doors and it was a great sight. I grabbed a couple of the Bangladeshi kitchen hands and an apprentice on the way so they could see the eclipse too. Loads of people were out there all looking up. The Bangladeshis chatted quietly in their language, English being a constant struggle, and after about 5 minutes one said to me, "Chef... what is happening?"

I explained what an eclipse was all about, pointed at the moon and then where the sun was (it obviously looked like I was pointing at the ground), I winged it about the redness and said it was some weird kind of light refraction phenomenon.

The kitchen hand looked at me blankly the whole time and half nodded when I stopped making words at him. We went back inside.

"That explanation," the apprentice said to me, "went so far over his head."

Guy probably thinks I'm totally mad.

Pretty moon though.

Operation Chervil

Sometimes when you are playing the role of Faux Chef for A Very Impressive Catering Company operating from the bowels of a Big White Pointy Sydney Icon, you have to do repetitive and not necessarily glamorous things.

Like picking herbs for canape garnish.

Herbs like chervil.

Things is, although I like to kick into action and do big stuff, I also don't mind chilling out and doing mindless things like picking tiny little leaves from their stem in a delicate manner for the greater good of a kick arse canape. Or several canapes, because as you may or may not know (and I definitely now know), chervil makes an excellent accompaniment to... oooh... TOO MANY canapes.

I was given half a tonne of chervil and told pick that. Fine, I thought, one of those jobs but that's cool because I am not in the mood for thinking. I am quite in the mood for picking chervil.

"So it's about 700 tiny little leaves you need to pick."

"That's cool."

"But that's the single leaf chervil garnish, not the multi leaf garnish."

"Still cool."

"Hang on... okay, so that's 700 smalls, 700 bigs..."

"Still cool. Getting less cool. But cool."

"Okay... looking at the week's menu there's quite a lot of chervil to be picked. May as well do it all at once. So..."

Soon - and I'm not joking - I was staring at a chart. The Chart Of Chervil. Operation Chervil. Clearly I was starting to look confused so The Canape Queen decided to help me by adding asterisks next to the canapes requiring chervil (in either it's big or small form). I wanted to draw up my own chart but she insisted that it was all right because she had already drawn up a chart for me.

"Cool."

I forgot to mention there was a chervil-picking helper that had been assigned to me. There had been quite a lot of discussion about chervil and the various sizes and quantities required and at some point along the way, she proved to be a very... a very efficient chervil picker. She managed to pick an awesome amount of chervil and classify it according to size and box it and label it with its quantity, which left me to refer to the chart to try to determine which boxes of tiny little (or not so little) chervil went onto each job and each job fridge.

Yes. It's big catering and every job has a number and a job fridge and you really do not want to put a box of 120 small chervil leaves into the job fridge requiring 700 large chervil sprigs.

There was also this: "No not all asterisks refer to chervil! It's just the black ones! You should have ignored the red asterisks - that's baby coriander!"