13/03/07

Salient sentiments

It’s good to know what people really think about you on your last day at work. Only person I know who got booed at his farewell speech. Ah Kodak moments, everlasting memories…

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26/07/06

Bands on the run

In the interest of trainspotting, fanboydom, and the general unfailing boyish desire to create endless and outwardly pointless lists, I thought I would chalk up on the Wowsers all the bands I have seen since departing on this rather odd life detour. For most this will be completely unintelligible, for some moderately interesting, for a few it may even be impressive. For all, merely an acknowledgement that I am still alive and more than content to piss all my money down the drain on the devil’s music. Let’s rock.

Feeder
We Are Scientists
The Rakes
Mogwai
The Aliens
Dirty Pretty Things
Howling Bells
The Young Knives
The Maccabees
The Spinto Band
Midlake
The Earlies
Tapes ‘n Tapes
Dinosaur Jr.
Brian Jonestown Massacre
Broken Social Scene
Dead Meadow
Mission Of Burma
Teenage Fanclub
Sleater Kinney
Black Heart Procession
Fiery Furnaces
Joanna Newsom
Spoon
The Shins
The Black Keys
Clinic
The Decemerists
Electrelane
Elf Power
The National
Undertow Orchestra
Graham Coxon
Roy Ayers
The Wailers
The Buzzcocks
Patti Smith
British Sea Power
Gomez
Mercury Rev
Jose Gonzalez
Part Chimp
Regina Spektor
My Latest Novel
Archie Bronson Outfit
Mumm-Ra
My Latest Novel
Adem
Eagles Of Death Metal
The Walkmen
The Futureheads
Pixies
The Strokes
Morrissey
The Kooks
Franz Ferdinand
Justice
Nada Surf
Lou Barlow
Madness
Depeche Mode
Art Brut
Placebo
Tortoise
The Agonal Trace-o

From memory, I’m pretty sure that’s it. If there are any others that I remember I’ll let you know. Now do you understand why I’m not returning anyone’s phone calls?

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04/07/06

I got a fever

and the only prescription is more cowbell.

Best Animated GIF ever, as voted by the Down On Wowsers management committee.

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26/06/06

Who cares about soccer anyway?

No idea why you were all getting worked up about it. Is it cricket season yet?

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22/06/06

Prognosis: World Cup Fever

Yes that’s right, it’s the obligatory world cup post. I’m sure ever blogger sitting on his or her purdy white iBook is currently waxing poetic about “the world game” and that I am only adding more salt to the wound, but god damnit at this point I’m far too drunk on Fosters and Aussie spirit to care. For tonight, Australia, are through to the top 16.

The World Cup does funny things to people. A notoriously slow and often scoreless game that “is mainly played by wogs and foreigners”, is suddenly the most enthralling, exciting, uplifting game ever devised by a man. For three odd weeks every four years, it is captivating beyond explanation. Even the birds like it. (that’s English for “women” btw). You can hear them sprouting off match statistics and player profile information with the same gusto they normally reserve for who they really hate or don’t really hate that much but still basically hate overall in the Big Brother household. I can’t tell if it’s treachery or a turn on.

But it’s not just the ladies. Oh no. Everyone is suddenly an authority on the subject. Everywhere you go, complete strangers seem to know exactly what is best for England’s chances, who should be coaching what, with whom, and with what blunt instrument up where. And I’m no exception. The six or seven odd years I spent playing centre half for Beacon Hill back in the 80s (ahem, Under 7 Pumas undefeated thank you very much) seems to give me enough credibilty to decide who really is offside and who should be given a bloody red card I mean come on why don’t you ask him out to a movie first get your bloody hands off him you [insert derogatory pseudo racist generalisation here]. There seems to be a PC cease fire during the World Cup. Suddenly everyone’s accents become that little bit broader, clothes become a tad more uniform-esque, and you can pretty much say whatever you want to whoever you want as long as the referee doesn’t blow the full time whistle.

Whether it’s patriotic or idiotic is bye the bye. You can put a million stupid flags on your car or you can say things like “mate who cares, it’s only a game”. The one thing you can’t deny, when you’re chewing your own fingernails, sweating sitting down, and shouting at the television screen, is that you actually care about where you are from. The litmus test has come back green and gold, and right now my name is clearly at the top.

That is of course until we play Italy, which by then my ego will swiftly turn to the slightly more realistic prospects provided by the boys from Blighty. England England England, oi oi oi!

p.s – After the 2-2 “win” against Croatia, Handsome Dan and I celebrated by going to a Thai restauraunt BECAUSE IT IS THE MOST AUSTRALIAN MEAL YOU CAN HAVE IN LONDON.

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12/06/06

Australia, f@*k yeah!!!

That is all.

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10/06/06

The Traveller

Travelling has never really appealed to me, and after my last two quick jaunts to Norway and France, a highly odd couple if you asked me, I’ve been trying to understand exactly what has been holding me back, and the conclusion that I came to is something that I’d consider to be fact more than opinion.

No one likes travellers.

No one. And why would you blame them? Travellers smell. They dress badly. They pollute internet cafes filling up their travel blogs with inane travel anecdotes about experiences like “well everyone, the Parthenon, well, you just have to experience it, WORDS CAN NOT DESCRIBE”. They have stupid accents and are constantly and rather vocally amazed when they meet another one of their kind who has the same stupid accent that they have. They don’t really know how everything works round here and as they’re catching the night train to Milan in a few hours they probably don’t care to find out. Sure they’re putting their fancy foreign money into the local coffers, but by their very nature travellers are a stingy lot and are not going to even feign a reach for your top shelf. They like to walk around all day looking at statues and parks and monuments and other free things, so what makes you think they’re going to be any different round the shops? Plus travellers listen to a whole lot of crap music on crap buses and love to sing and dance to anything crap just because they’re happy and damn it why the hell should I even pretend to give them the time of day let alone tell them which is the way to the post office. Not LOCAL??? They should be bloody well hunted in the summer. They are cashed up vagrants polluting the world with their foreign unsightly ways. Filth.

And then… I went travelling.

If you’ve never been travelling, I tell you it’s bloody unreal. You can smell. You can dress badly. You’ll be in some strange far off town in Scandinavia and you’ll meet an Australian and even though back home you’d have nothing in common and would probably take the piss out of them for wearing a Shins t-shirt like 5 years too late, you are instantly BEST FRIENDS! You can breeze into a new town, just potter around doing nothing all day and it’s not boring. You can fall asleep in a park because you’ve fulfilled your agenda of eating for this hour and the next window for eating isn’t for another twenty minutes. You don’t really want to carry too much stuff so you don’t really spend any money, and besides there are loads of really mundane things that you will take pictures of thinking that they are amazing because the English translation of a Bicycle Shop in Norway is “Big Fat Dyke Fruitbat” or something. Then you can put a picture of it up on your travel blog so that all your travel blog mates can link to it from their travel blogs. Plus you’ll be in a bar somewhere in Toulouse and suddenly Jet will come on the stereo and although you completely hate Jet and consider them to be the musical equivalent of an ingrown toe-nail operation, by crikey they’re an Aussie band mate and if there is one person left in this bar that doesn’t understand that I’m Australian and that Jet are Australian and that Jet and I are Australian together, well then you may as well have been up on the cliffs at Gallipoli eating Turkish delight and taking pot shots at top Aussie blokes who died so that you could have a bloody grouse life.

But the best thing about travelling, is that you can wake up in the morning, brush your teeth, have breakfast (take an apple now Kate, even though you’re not hungry slip one in your bag for later, get me and Josh one too), and embrace the day safe in the knowledge that you don’t have to go to work. And this is why I’m pretty sure that 90% of the bums you see on the high street haven’t had a woman break their heart or a family disown them. Nope, they’re just travellers who forgot to go home.

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06/06/06

The idiots are winning

This photo pretty much sums up what is on everyone’s mind here at the moment. There are idiots everywhere driving around with England flags hanging out of their cars. People actually wear football kit in the street. Soon there will be face painting and all will be lost. At first I thought it was cool, and now all I can think of is a million Aussie yobs shouting “Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi” isn’t even going to measure up to the rampant chavism that is about the pour down on this country like a pint of Snakebite on a mock tudor bar. Even if England don’t win, it will no doubt be a victory for the idiots.

That said, I can’t bloody wait. As soon as Australia gets knocked out… Eng-ga-land!!!

ps – Sorry I haven’t posted for a while. The reason is… meh who cares.

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30/05/06

Kelly on the telly

Loads of people, well a few people, ok so it’s just Cannonball, have asked me to chalk up a highlights package of last weekend’s All Tomorrow’s Parties festival. I thought about it for a second, then got bored and started looking for a way out. And here it is.

See the unique thing about ATP is, not only do the bands curate the music for the weekend, but they also programme a television channel, pumping out NOTHING BUT GOLD all weekend. You could have easily stayed in your little “chalet” all weekend (posh word meaning “tiny sh*t hole”) and been more than content to miss every band while you’re blissfully glued to the box. And if there was one specific program that had me enthralled, well…

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18/05/06

A life not much less ordinary

In the morning the sun comes up, your alarm goes off, you do all your get yourself together stuff then you go to work. You sit in front of a computer for 8 hours, you go home. At night it gets dark, you do all your get yourself to bed stuff, then you go to sleep. Copy, paste, repeat. It’s called life and it doesn’t matter where you are, if you have a job in a city it’s all the same shit, only the accents are slightly different. Moan moan moan, I seem to be adapting to England faster than I’d imagined.

Only difference is, when the weekend hits in Australia, you can’t just go abroad and bugger off to The Netherlands “for fun”. Now that I have enough money coming in to keep me off the streets, this is what I plan to do to make this massive life detour seem more palatable. Here’s the rundown, not that I’m gloating or anything, but basically I’m going to do all this stuff and you’re not. So, yeah.

This weekend is the festival to end all festivals, All Tomorrow’s Parties down in Sussex. Three whole days of indie rock snobbery. Stick your Reading, up yer… yeah that. Every time I re-read the line up another tear of joy runs down my cheek.

The following weekend I’m off to Oslo with Nat to look at fjords and Viking relics and stuff. Apparantly it’s even more expensive than London so that should be fun.

The weekend after that Handsome Dan and I shall be gracing the south of France with our prescence, as we reunite with Dan’s ex-flatmate The Colonel Ian Bennett in Toulouse. The South of France. You can hear all the chick’s getting all Ameilie when you say that.

The weekend after that there’s this soccer tournament starting which I reckon is going to be HUGE! It’s called the “Whirl Cup” or something, anyway the Brits are all pretty much into it so I think I might drink in some London culture while it’s on and everyone’s actually in a good mood for a change. Man if England win a game, AND it’s a sunny day… oh man there’ll be rainbows coming out of every pommy orifice you can count on it.

Then at the end of July, finally, f@#king FINALLY, I get to see the Pixies. In Spain. In Summer. On a beach. Next to the Medditerranean. The Pixies. Monkey Gone To Heaven. Alec Eiffel. Wave Of Mutilation. On a beach. Spain. Summer… yeah I’m kind of looking forward to that.

ps – Dan’s having a killer party this weekend for his 30th or something, which to be honest will be totally crap because I won’t be there (and neither with Cannonball), and right now he and Clare Upstairs are practicing dance moves for an “impromptu” rooftop performance. He just bolted down the stairs all sweaty like Napoleaon Dynamite after D-Kwon’s dance moves, and said this to me:

Done.

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