Why cheers for that! I’m glad you dig Girls bike.
I’m from Good ol’ Sydney Australia, hidden amongst the disabling heat and beaches where I casually reach over for other people’s sunscreen.
Thanks for that!
I never really knew I had this ability to graft words together in something slightly funny, and good words like yours make it that much more awesome. So thanks again!
Sure thing! I’m a bit of a vid geek, so I can always send you my raw rushes and we could have a vid ed comp, sounds good? And the musical is slowly being put together, maybe a youtube event is in the cards?
The life and times of the worker-bee
Is never the life I chose for me,
Maybe if I had the supreme chance
A sloths life I would advance,
To spend the days by the rays of the sun,
And scratching my large sloth bum.
Oh life would be grand,
If all I did was withstand
The desire to eat and procreate,
And sleep all day till very late.
Oh yes, the sloths life is it for me,
Never a real dull moment as you see.
Yet I grow tired of my sloth jealousy,
Because maybe sloths envy yours truly?
Perusing my life and achievements of late,
They’ll curse being always in a lazy state!
Either way, I’ll act like a sloth today,
By lying in bed for the rest of the day.
I have strange luck.
It’s never consistent luck, like it is never a good constant and a bad constant, but instead it’s a cosmic mix of good and bad luck that was hilarious, but now I find fucking annoying. It’s made me jump to the conclusion that the various gods above and below are all enjoying the hilarious show that is my zany life and pissing themselves like no tomorrow. Oh woe is me, dear reader, woe is me! I could rattle on and give specific examples, but I think one story would just about prove my crazy theory and make you shake your own fist at the sky and curse the odd luck. This story shall be called:
Come on jerk, give a dude a break!
If you don’t know already, my favorite band of all existence is at the drive-in. They were a band that had explosive energy, music that hit all the marks and a style that shiploads of lesser bands tried to copy to no success. The unfortunate thing was in the peak of their international success, they imploded and announced an indefinite hiatus. This would then fuel that band to pursue all different types of ethics and styles that would be reveled in success; bands like Defacto, Sparta, Sleepercar, Dios Kilos, The Fall on Deaf Ears, Jim Ward solo project, the Omar Rodriguez Lopez group and so on. I was lucky to have met 3/5’s of At The Drive-In and spend time with my fucking heroes, Jim Ward, Paul Hinojos and Tony Hajjar. And I never felt starstruck before, but these guys were my equivalent of meeting gods. But that left Omar and Cedric as the only two I hadn’t a chance in meeting. And it was impossible, they are in a band called The Mars Volta, and getting a chance to meet them would be like winning the fucking lottery.
Little did I know, I bought a ticket and lost it…
I was working a graveyard shift at work, and it was my fourth day into a 6 day streak, due to a mishap into the rostering schedule. I was already up for days since I was chasing work up with lack of sleep, by filling other hours full of wanting to rehearse with bands, a few freelance editing gigs and spending time with my then grrrl. So at this point I felt like the embodiment of the living dead; my eyes were propped open with toothpicks, which were as red and sore like damaged skin, my skin was pale and clammy as it missed the sweet warn glow that the sun graces and my mind was a mush that housed the bare essentials to breathe, mumble, chuckle and operate a job effectively without the risk of being fired.
It was then that I received a call from Dreadlock Tony. This guy is by far one of the coolest folk to assault the planet, he is a talented Graf artist that had bombs all around Sydney that would make people double take, was interviewed in the Sydney Morning Herald into why he was so cool (I’m not joking, that’s the truth) and was able to land tickets to events and places that are just impossible.
The Mars Volta was playing an exclusive gig and he landed tickets, he knew how much of a true die hard I was for them, so I was the first point of call. Also he dropped the bombshell that he landed backstage tickets too. I did what anyone would do when they were about to meet their heroes… Shrieked like a pre-pubescent kid and jump wildly about the place. Yep. Smooth. So I agreed. In two days time I was to see this gig during the day and get a chance to hang out with Omar and Cedric from the Mars Volta. My various gods things were looking up!
What I didn’t anticipate was the excitement that would generate inside my own being. I then spent the following two days awake still, eagerly awaiting the day to meet the other 2/5’s of At The Drive-In. I completely ignored my need for rest that when the day swung around I was doomed to crash and burn.
I finished my night shift at work, it was a bright hot summer day in the middle of January, and I crawled to my car. I thought the plan through, finish work, get into car, take a nap, wake up good to go for THE encounter. And so I did. I didn’t anticipate the coma I was about to slip into, and so for the following 12 hours I snoozed in my car, at the parking lot of my work, on the day where I was to meet my heroes.
I awoke hours later fully rested. I instantly knew that feeling was the opposite in mind, I looked over at my phone, there was 12 missed calls, 8 texts and the clock displayed that it was late in the evening. It then occurred to me what happened.
I casually then stepped out of my car. Closed the door. And began to yell and scream so loudly that my voice bounced off the moon and ruptured ear drums in Russia.
I SLEPT THROUGH THE CHANCE MOMENT OF MEETING THE MARS VOLTA. HOW THE HELL DID I MANAGE TO DO THAT?
Curse you luck gods. Curse you in wanting to see me deafen some poor mamuska in Russia over getting a chance to share a brew with my heroes. Curse you! You might have won this round, but I would get the last laugh! You’ll see!
House parties. They can go two ways, the true path that everyone wants which is the epic win memorable moment of awesomeness, or the crash and burn obscure catastrophe that becomes a source of shame. I guess I’m lucky that I have only had a few house parties that end up as pleasant memories, but I have attended so many that were so hilariously terrible that this next story is the most awkward out of them all. It’s called:
The Knack, underage booze and smeared lipstick…
I got to know this girl by the name of Go-go, I met her at another party when I helped her into her families car when she was messy drunk. She managed to find my number eventually from other folk who went to this party and decided to thank me via SMS. And so eventually we got to know each other, and from the first impression I got was that she was slightly insane. I guess the biggest sign was that she got mighty angry at me for not answering my phone since it was switched off at work… And we were friends at that point, nothing else at all, now is that odd dear reader? Why yes, yes it is. Moving on, so she was planning to throw a party and she asked if my band at the time could play this event. I was hesitant at first, but after conferring with my bandmates, we agreed to play.
So the night came round for this party, we packed up all the gear and found our way to Go-go’s house. The band were excited about the prospect of playing a house party and searing the ear drums of young folk with our mighty weapons of mass distortion, I was too… but I was slightly anxious. I kind of knew something was lurking around the bend. We found the house and we started to unload. At this point Go-go asked me to help her with something upstairs, so I did. What I didn’t anticipate was being ambushed by her, she led me upstairs and kissed me. I stopped her quickly, and gave her the “errr what the fuck?!” face to which she replied with:
“yeah, that was strange, kissing you was like kissing a cousin!”
I didn’t know how to take that, so I then just went back downstairs and setup. The band was good to go and we erupted on the crowd that was there. We played for ages, we blitzed heaps of songs including My Sharona by the Knack which just made people go nuts. Yet through our whole set that we took control of the whole living room for, Go-go was wildly making out with almost every guy there in eye shot of yours truly. Classic jealousy ploy I suppose, buy the reality was that I thought she was about as sane as a kick to the stomach and thought this was hilarious. At this point some guy with a head of hair that looked like a shaggy helmut ran in screaming with a bottle of Jagermeister in his hands, he then was tackled by Go-go, kissed, with which he followed by deep swigs of Jager. He then moshed a bit before passing out on the couch.
What I didn’t know at the time was that the cops were outside asking us to turn down the music, and they were actively ushering kids out of the way by ways of force and arrest. Inside a rush of kids spilled into the living room, they tried to pick up their passed out friend and lug him into the backyard away from the police, since he was mighty underage. Throws of kids started to run around looking to hide or escape the fate of the police, jumping fences into neighboring yards and trying their hardest to not get caught.
Turns out it was just a noise complaint.
So we stopped our set by a warning from the cops, which was fine because at this point no-one was around because everyone fled from the strong arm of the law. I then asked for a drink of water from Go-go to ale a parched throat and she returned with a glass full of vodka. I instantly gave her the familiar “errr what the fuck?!” face and grabbed my gear and left in my days old black barina.
So here are some rules for a house party, secure your belongings, make sure you warn the neighbors of loud bands and music, check if everyone is of legal age, and if they aren’t… don’t make out with them and cheer them on to chug Jager. Still by far one of the strangest parties yet.
I think everyone goes through this phase, the “I’m going to disconnect from the net” saga. I was thinking about it yesterday, and did disconnect. I slid my phone off, switched my computer off and figured what the hell I was going to do next. This is a timeline of said events:
04:30pm: phone off and pc turned off. Feeling a sense of accomplishment, with a slight twang of curiosity.
04:45pm: thinking if anyone commented on my facebook about where I’ve gone to, and why there is a lack of sass online.
04:47pm: thought if twitter was down for the count with a flood of @ mentions from non-existent followers
04:48pm: questioned if people at tumblr noticed my lack of online activity and compensated it with an instant obituary?
04:56pm: nervously begin to bite nails at paranoid fears that some groups of people are searching for me using Google earth/street view in realtime.
04:58pm: nail beds are bleeding and cuticles look like burn victims consequently.
05:11pm: attempt to act busy by sharpening pencils, followed by pens, followed by another pencil sharpener. Prognoses: staedtler pen company need to upgrade their blades as they blunt easily whilst sharpening metal.
05:12pm: look into the idea of emailing staedtler pen company and complaining, instantly stop and sigh since I wanted to disconnect…
05:17pm: begin to silently flip through webpages in my mind, and hope the things on eBay I’m bidding on are ending soon.
05:18pm: come to the conclusion that my mind has no Internet connection and that I might slowly be going mental!
05:20pm: admit defeat, slide phone on, pc on. No new messages, tweets, updates, blogs and anything net related. Sigh deeply and switch off again.
Longest 50 minutes of my life. Curse you Internet, I remember a time ages ago when the Internet didn’t exist and how I found my life easier without a constant itchy feeling of needing to connect/log on. But those were simple times, and if young punk Seb could, he would have a blog at the ripe age of 10.
Maybe I should lock myself into a rehab, or sell my arms to try and disconnect properly next time. But I know that some time soon after that, I would crudely use my hair as finicky arms to connect and place a status update about being awesome…
I missed out on the cornerstone of a dietary requirement all my life, the ever amazing Kebab. I love Kebabs, nothing hits the spot like a kebab after a filthy night on the town or in the middle of the day nursing a hangover. But it still shocks me that I never really had a kebab until a few years back, I partially blame a repressed childhood rich in Spanish foods and guilt mixed with the passion for cheeseburgers after nights out on Tequila. Yet with that aside, I remember the day/hour/moment that I had my very first kebab… and it saved my life.
It was 2004, the Big Day Out music festival was in full effect. That year they decided to spread their insane amount of bands over two days due to fast sellouts and increased fan demand. I was lucky to have nabbed a ticket for each day, and those two days were just crammed with hanging out in the sun, moshing my fucking face into dust and getting so incredibly drunk that it should have been a crime against humanity. With that aside, I made lusty eyes at the bassist of Skulker in the morning, cheered on the costume changes from the Darkness, yelling that I’m a motherfucker from hell with the Datsuns, listened appreciatively to Kings Of Leon, danced like a LSD trooper to the Dandy Warhols, admired jealously the talent of Matt Belamy and the ever impressive Muse, started something with the Lost Prophets, laughed at Julian Casablancs from the Strokes and his baby mutilation ideas, felt disapointed with Metallica and the douche that is Lars Ulrich, cheered on the Flaming Lips with a stolen lighter, yelled at Adalita from Magic Dirt to make me her love slave, had my face melted off from The Mars Volta, got crowd surfed in the Fear Factory set, poisoned a well of ear drums with Poison the Well, yelled at Sleepy Jackson that his sister from Little Birdie had more talent, wondered if Iggy Pop was going to surprise Peaches on stage during her steamy set and watched the keyboardist from the Dandy Warhols shimmy her toned ass meats along with Jet over a period of a day. Over the course of this day, I met up with friends, lost them, met up again and arranged something stupid. At the time I was friends to a Canadian dude named Cameron. He was a strange dude, he looked like Dylan Moran from Black Books, was a mobile phone salesmen and lived in New Zealand but was on holiday in Sydney. I arranged that sometime in the Thursday gig we would head butt each other. Only drunken morons would consider this the greatest of ideas, but it was all stations go… apparently.
Thursday erupted on stage, they began their set with the first track off their War All The Time LP called “For The Workforce, Drowning”, it was just mental. I had managed to get my ribs cracked on the guard rail, but loved it dearly. Followed closely by that fevered track came Paris In Flames and Understanding in a Car crash. At this point, I then developed a man crush on Geoff Rickley, since he jumped down from the stage and screamed directly in my face during the bridge of Division St.
Thursday kept assaulting the audience easily with their relentless songs, they urged a riot if they played Jet Black New Year, which the audience did so easily. It was halfway through this track that Cameron the crazy Canadian mobile phone salesman signalled to me, we head butted each other incredibly hard… and the next thing I felt was just pins and needles. The pins and needles swept over me quickly, enveloping me in a sickly pang of panic and radiated heat. I don’t think I felt that feeling ever in my life, I think I was going to pass out. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a veteran of pain, in fact if pain had an arm it would tattoo my name on it with a love heart. So, instead of admitting defeat, I stayed to the end of the Thursday set. The feeling kept getting greater, I was seeing double and a wave of black was hurtling towards me slowly. Thursday strummed out the last notes of their set in the waves of “I am the Killer”. I then threw myself out of the mosh and stumbled blindly for a cure of whatever is taking control. Lights were blurring together, and I was feeling beyond fate, I was feeling like gravity wanted me to throw myself at the floor and shut the gates of my mind.
Then I saw it.
It was a Kebab shop. It had bright flickering neon lights welded to the sides of a demountable caravan portable kitchen thing, and it was located on the outskirts of the festival, strung next to a make shift beer tent and a few other caravan’s of food stuffs. I ran up, and just asked for something. Anything. Anything at all. “Surprise me!” I think I bellowed at the stall owner, and he just made a heavenly kebab… he did say some things when he made this godly thing, but he just sounded muffled and distant. He finished, wrapped it up and handed it over. I dumped money on the counter, not knowing how much, but not caring.
I instantly wolfed it down. It was amazing. The flavour danced on my tastebuds, the mystery meats lavished in their moment and painted a canvas of culinary delight in my mind, and the dried up festival salad exploded full of intensity in my mouth. The feeling that was owning just before slowly crept away. It then became a distant memory when I finished that amazing kebab and was licking off the garlic sauce from my fingers. You might think that this was just a malnourished situation at a music festival, but I honestly think that that night I met the almighty one, and ate the food of kings. I went back to the stall, and shook the owners hand and said thank-you. He told me to fuck off and I was on my merry way, what a great guy.
And so, each time I go out with friends/family/strangers and your parents, I inevitably end up having a kebab with whoever I am with, and each time I do, we say grace, and we thank the gods for the creation of this life saving food staple…
Music, is my life. I cannot live without it at all. Every-time I walk around I have a soundtrack in my head and skip to tracks I adore on request from a jukebox located deep in my brain-meat factory. It ranges from everything, one moment it can be a churning painful track from bands like Parkway Drive, Refused, Propagandhi, Alexisonfire to beautiful melodies and thick sounds capes of Muse, Miles Davis, Pink Floyd, Tito Puente, Gypsy Kings, Mars Volta, Eddie Sharp & the magnetic zeros, and anyone else who I’ve had the honour of listening to. And I’m extremely honoured to enjoy this, the concept of enjoying and appreciating music is just indescribable. And to play music? Even fucking better. I enjoy the way it can play on emotions, can turn lives around and maybe, just maybe harnessed into a weapon can make a person release their bowels. But, oddly I’ve noticed that something is a miss every time I mention the next sentence to anyone that I meet, know and hang out with. It seems to make people question who I am, where I stand and maybe what my preference is. But why? I can’t fucking understand.
I WANT TO WRITE A MUSICAL
So what?! Is it wrong for a grown man of 26 wanting to write a musical? I’m not a gay bumblebee because I’m thinking of lyrics that are about each and every time I drop my toast butter side down. I’m not a psychotic fan of the Von Trapp family, and I don’t think those hills are ever alive with the sound of music if you think I own 20 copies of the Sound Of Music on DVD. I’m not a disgruntled writer perched over a piano quietly scribbling lyrics and notations into ledgers whilst sitting around piles of scrunched up papers carelessly tossed to the ground, all of which contain other stinkers of ideas that I spent little amounts of time trying to concoct and rejecting. And fuck NO, I am not a fucking douche for wanting to write a fucking musical!
But then, I was wondering, what would make wanting to write a musical so odd and queer? Is it that musicals are all so happy and colourful, and thus unrealistic? Is it that people cannot stand when someone would spontaneously bust out into song in the middle of….oh I don’t know, waiting in line to use an ATM? Is it that people feel the conservatism of musicals make them susceptible to being a prude? Or is it just because they aren’t fucking cool? Too many questions, and seriously not enough urge to give each and every one of them a glimmer of an answer. So, I’m sticking with wanting to write a musical. And the idea would be different, I was thinking a punk rock musical. A punk rock musical about being trapped inside of a terrible musical, and the only way out? Yelling and chanting fast and painful songs whilst destroying the regular musical ethos with a sledgehammer! And if I said it would be dramatic ironic statement on what most people think of musicals, then BLAM, I can get away with that shit no sweat. I hope. And where would this be displayed at? A fucking defunct factory, where the final chords will ring out, and the audience is then supplied with a mallet. What for? For their imagination, that’s what!
So I’m going to start taking the musical back. And finally, FUCK NO, I AM NOT CHANNELLING THAT ASS HAT SHOW CALLED GLEE! GAWD! JEEZ!
There is a point in every dudes life where he is shaving a beard off with a disposable pink leg shaver in his parents bathroom, at this exact point he thinks “I know life can get lower than this, but maybe I’m lowering the bar even further?”.
That was this morning. I decided to shave off my hobo beard that I was enjoying for the past month and go with the flow of Movember. I sculptured together a classy Clark Gable style moustache, mixed in with the lesser known porn star of the 70’s known as Kneecaps Watson. It looks dreadful. Really dreadful! Its about as awesome as watching your neighbors attempt to explore each other sexually by attaching a suspended love seat in their backyard pergola, whilst wearing nothing but vinyl and smiles. Awkward is the word, yeah, awkward. When I look at the mirror at the monstrosity I created, I shudder inside and kinda get a little freaked out.
But lucky for me, this cloud has a silver lining, its all for Movember. I don’t care if I look like an absolute cad or the neglected brother of Freddy Mercury, it’s for a greater cause. Cancer is a fucking bitch, simple. I have witnessed the severity of it first hand when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, if the cancer itself didn’t kill, the treatment almost would. But what I gathered from the whole thing is that; Medical practices in the treatment of cancers have progressed forwards in leaps and bounds, that there are a great deal of organizations who need more support than what they have already (since they are crucial in so many ways), and that looking like an absolute dick to raise some money for cancer research is the smallest price to pay for the overall outcome… having to spend more time with the ones who matter most. So, every time that there is a foundation that needs some support, I usually give it, it never really was this way, but seeming that I can still hangout with my dear ol’ ma and have her laugh at my stupid stories, it really pays for itself.
Donate some moolah motherfucker! DO IT NOW!
OK, time to get off the moral high horse and enjoy the power a dirty Clark Gable moustache can create… ladies?
