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?

Things, People & Stuff I'm Into right Now

Sleep.
The child ghost that haunts my home.
Road trip.
Music.
Singing.
Moira Finucane.
Nick Cave lyrics.
Swan diving into the abyss.
Love.
Bird.
The silver penguins when they face each other.
Rachael (who won't let me say Rachael).
Chloe, who says I love you and who I say I love you back to.
Deb.
Crying.
Sharing.
When Jude laughs at something I've said.
Hugs.
Smiles that burst out from within.
My camera.
Dancing.
Lazily caressing the back of Ann's Knees.
Laziness.
Giving.
Sharing.
And a million other things, people and stuff that I appreciate even though I haven't mentioned them here just now (it's tired, people, and I'm late, okay?).

A New Camera

I have a new camera. I am excited because I've always wanted a good camera. I want to take lots of interesting photos with it. In fact I'm so excited about the new camera that I'd like to post a photo of it... only I can't because how do you take a photo of your new camera unless you have two cameras?

Alas, I only have one camera.

Tempe, Arizona

Hello. Who Are you?

Rabbit Review, No Dice, And A Chat With Moira Finucane

Latest couple of things in Drum. I really enjoyed Rabbit. And I enjoyed talking to the No Dice guys. They were kind of warm and kooky.

I'm hoping to catch the No Dice show but I really am heading off for three weeks and don't know where my head's going to be at. I always get floaty and drifty when I do these road trips (more floaty and drifty than usual), so I don't know whether I'll be motivated enough to head back to Sydney to see theatre in the middle of a period of feral psytranceness.

Oh and I spoke to Moira Finucane from The Burlesque Hour this morning. Really lovely chat. She talked so much and answered so many questions without me getting to ask them, but she was great. I love such creative and passionate people. She mentioned an act that she does in The Burlesque Hour and the penny dropped that I had seen the first incarnation of the show. I kept recognising segments mentioned but thought maybe I had just seen the individual acts at different burlesque shows, but she mentioned this particular Victorian character (the period, not the Australian state) she does and I said hang on - did you do The Burlesque Hour at The Studio a few years ago?

I must have seen it because of 3D, mag I worked for at the time. I remember it as being a strange show, weird characters, off-kilter funny, sexy in a kinky kind of way. You just never knew what was going to happen next. You never knew what emotion was being pounded. Good stuff.

I knew I had seen her, just hadn't remembered that it was this particular show, albeit in an earlier form. See? Floaty and drifty.

Rejection

I can't post the Dylan Moran 'Rejection' clip directly for whatever reason, so here is a link to it. Watch it please. It's classic. Sums up where my head is at. I'll probably keep writing fiction for me, but Holy Santa Claus I hate those rejection letters. Apparently I haven't got The Thing, and that's ok. I just have to accept it.

I really believed my most recent story, Leaving Ruben Jane, was good enough, but it just drew a standard thanks but no thanks rejection. I really can't be bothered anymore.

Dorothy Porter

Australian poet Dorothy Porter died a couple of days ago. She was 54 years old. This is not very old and is especially sad for someone so talented and, it would seem, so loved.

I was at the Sydney Writers Festival a few years ago, being very self-conscious because I had a story out in a thing and I didn't really know how to act or how to be.

At one point I looked up and saw Dorothy looking at me. You ever get that thing when you catch someone really looking at you and you wonder what they are seeing? Look at her face. That's a face that sees stuff.

Anyway. I felt a pull, a gravity. I wanted to go over to her and say hello. But I hesitated and I didn't do it. She was successful poet and I was just me. And I guess I thought maybe there will be another time. I didn't go over and say hello, and now there will never be another time because she is gone.

She was probably a very beautiful human.

Grumpy Viking

Here is my most recent Grumpy column. I sent the column to the editor and he asked if I had a photo to run with the column and I said I'd pop around to the costume hire store and see what I could do. The Dreaded One and I took several shots before one of the shop guys minced over and squealed, "There are no photos, guys," before mincing flamboyantly away again. It made us laugh because he was wrong - there were heaps of photos.

Still, we thought we'd do the right thing and left. Saw this helmet on the way out and bought it. At the next doof, my evening attire will consist of purple Turkish poncho and Viking helmet. Splendid.

Frankenstein Review, A Chat With Sam Simmons, and a Random Memory

Click on the images to make big and read a couple of things in this week's Drum mag.

The play was fun and Sam Simmons was weird, in a fun way.

I would love for more of my waking hours to be talking to people and making stories out of those conversations. And watching theatre and telling people what I thought about it.

Random memory from the weekend: New People and some of their friends came back to our place after a day of drinking. New Person said she liked one of The Dreaded One's Paintings, so I jumped up on the couch and tore the painting down from the wall and started rolling it up. The Dreaded One came in from another room as this was happening and asked what I was doing. I told her that New Person likes the painting so I was giving it to her (it was New Person's Birthday). The Dreaded One said that it was her favourite painting. I unrolled it and started sticking it back on the wall and told New Person that she could not have this painting anymore.

The Golden Path And New People

This clip perfectly captures my mood at the moment. I saw this clip after a big club night a while back and I thought it was such a brilliant marriage of visuals and music that I went out that day and bought the single. This was at a time I didn't have to buy music. I just loved this track immediately and had to have it. So good to rediscover stuff.

I was going to write in detail about My Saturday Faux Chefing, but I don't know that I want to go through it again. It's kind of funny, but I'm also beginning to wonder what I am doing it for.

Briefly, I started off the day waking up after a couple of double shifts (for you civilians - this means we work hard for around 15 hours without a break) and having one hour to research Eden Falk for an interview about the new Cate Blanchett play War Of The Roses. Interview went fine, had a shower and then an hour to research Amber McMahon for the same story. Ran out the door to catch the bus to the kitchen at The Big Pointy Building and hit the ground running.

I like both things. Mostly I like building stories out of these conversations. What I don't like is having that knot in my stomach because of the day ahead. The day was just a bit bigger than the team in the kitchen, even if we did pull it together in the end. There was no satisfaction in a job well done, just relief that we got through it. Too many times I thought this is simply not going to happen.

I did a wedding in The Utzon Room and had no buffer time. My fault in many ways, but it was scary. Only 70 people, but it was insane. We were finishing prepping the last of the entres as the first were going out, I dropped the ball a couple of times and was saved and I really appreciate that.

Started to calm down when after many near disasters the only thing left was to cut the wedding cake. Easy, I thought.

Then the cake came out and it was not your standard wedding cake but the prettiest, frilliest, most ornate three tiered thing you could imagine. I dismantled it, did some bodgy maths and with 20 minutes to spare went to work. Nervous sweats? Hell yeah. There was no back up cake. This was it. It was like a scene where James Bond is disarming a nuclear device with seconds to spare, but it was me and I was disarming a wedding cake.

Anyway. It was not funny. I didn't enjoy anything from the entire day except talking to Eden and Amber and planning the story.

Yesterday was different though. Remember New Person? Met her for birthday drinks. Her and her husband and some of their friends. Pub, then dub afternoon in the park, then back to ours where my wheels fell off but fuck it. Good people, these new people. There was just happiness and stumbling and talking bollocks and Viking helmets... real happiness.

Silly Season = Angry Season

The anger has come back. I work in an environment that is often physically uncomfortable, hours are long and it's mentally stressful. I always wanted to see the funny side of stuff. Alas, there appears to be no funny side at the moment. I don't mind hard work, don't mind dealing with idiots (within reason), I understand there is a certain amount of testosterone-fueled stupidity in men with a point to prove, but fuck me it's all wearing me down at the moment.

I don't get people who don't care. I don't get people who don't take pride. I don't get people who think they have arrived and there is no point trying to better themselves. I don't get people who like to be spiteful to other people. I don't get stupidity... actually I get this and know you have to work around it, but man it drives me nuts. I don't get why people who move slowly, I don't get why waiters on a five hour shift think they have food entitlements over chefs doing multiple 15 hour shifts without breaks, I don't get attitude and hidden agendas or sloppiness. I don't get lack of focus (yeah okay, in my own time I am The King Of Lack Of Focus, I just try not to be at work), I don't get laziness or sleaze or greed.

I don't like anger. I don't like shouting. I don't like looking at another human in a way that I know has made them feel bad. I don't like the fact that I can do that very well, especially when I do it to a person in a moment of anger and I know that they are basically a well-meaning person.

Tonight I couldn't look at another person because they angered me so much I had serious thoughts about strangling them with the flat rice noodles I was blanching.

I don't like that I am not spending more times with the people who make me feel more like me. No stress. Relaxed. Comfortable. And not the least like screaming something like, "WHY THE FUCK IS THERE NOT A SINGLE FRUIT JUICER TOP IN THIS ENTIRE FUCKING KITCHEN WHEN THERE WERE ATE LEAST, LIKE, TWENTY JUST LAST WEEK? FUCK YEAH THERE WERE TWENTY BECAUSE I COUNTED THEM BECAUSE I WAS JUST AMAZED AT HOW LUXURIOUS IT WAS TO HAVE TWENTY FRUIT JUICER TOPS ALTOGETHER! IN THE ONE KITCHEN! NOW THERE'S NOT A SINGLE ONE AND I WANT TO KNOW WHY ALMOST AS MUCH AS I WANT TO SQUEEZE THE JUICE OUT OF 16 LIMES. WHERE DID ALL THE JUICER TOPS GO?"

Just one of the many rants I had today. I don't like anger. Find it repugnant in others and disappointing in myself.

Currently in desperate need of my happy.

Sam Simmons Staring Competition

I had to interview Sam Simmons today. Below is the proposal I sent to Drum, all along knowing that there would probably be a problem. Read what could have been...

SIMMONS SAID

SAM SIMMONS MAY OR MAY NOT BE APPEARING AT A COMEDY GALA FESTIVAL AT THE COMEDY STORE. AFTER A BRIEF AND SLIGHTLY SURREAL PHONE CONVERSATION IN WHICH THE STAND UP COMEDIAN DID A WEE, SANG HIS FAVOURITE BICUIT JINGLES FROM THE 80S AND REMINISCED ABOUT BEING GAFFER TAPED UNDER A STAIR CASE AND BEING SPOONED BY WIL ANDERSON, LEE BEMROSE FOUND HIMSELF LOCKED IN A STARING COMPETITION WITH THE DAVID HELFGOTT OF COMEDY...

















“I win. You blinked.”
“No you did.”



WHAT: The Comedy Store Gala Special featuring Sam Simmons, Wil Anderson, The Axis Of Awesome and more.
WHEN & WHERE: Tuesday & Saturday until 20 December at The Comedy Store, Moore Park Entertainment Quarter.