Machine Music

Music from the poker machines is a disgusting
Hideous siren's song to the desperate
Crawling around on the floor searching for coins
To put in the slot so they can watch the colours spin.
Continuous clicking.
Click, click, ding and a merry tinkle;
There is no sound more evil
Heard or devised in the history of man
Than the hypnotic, rhythmic jingle - the signal
That yet another decrepit soul
Has been laid out on the rack
Pockets heavy, eyes full of hope
Waiting... Eager...
And ready to be fucked.

Comedy and Laughing

My beard is getting way out of hand. It's not even that intense, I can pull at it with my fingers no problem at this point which is never a state I want my facial hair to be in, but I don't think I look like a failed case... it's just really annoying. Itchy. Fuck I hate facial hair, my electric shaver thingo broke in my bag on the plane to Brisbane last Wednesday, so when I went to use it a few days ago, instead of a neat trim accompanied by mild face-pain as per usual, the teeth just grabbed at the thick, black hairs sticking out of my chin, impotent and unable to cut. I was standing in a hostel toilet staring at a face in a mirror with a set of twenty dollar K-Mart facial-hair clippers hanging from it. My face. Fuck you Brisbane.

This trip has been good so far, although I'm just starting to count the days until my departure – not from hatred of this place so much as impatience to get back to my own place and set to work on a bunch of ideas that have been brewing in my head since I got here. I've been writing lots, and often, and aside from two drunken nights at the Base Embassy Hostel with an assortment of lecherous Canadians and Norwegians, have stayed completely sober. Clear headed, yes.

I've been thinking about the fact that my writing, and really a lot of the writing that I particularly like and try to draw from, isn't particularly funny. Even writers who are considered 'humorists' don't have many moments of actual, laugh-out-loud (I refuse to abbreviate that term) hilarity in their books. I can think of one moment in a Bukowski book, one of Douglas Adams', nothing from Hunter S. really springs to mind. Does that mean the expectations placed on an author, or a piece of writing, are lower? Or that the laughter is just more internal... as if laughter is more of a thing that comes from experiencing something funny as a group rather than just experiencing something funny in itself.

I guess that's where Dave Grant's idea of 'comedy is electricity' comes from; if laughter comes from experiencing something funny as a group, then the laughter will naturally be stronger and come easier when the audience feels united – feels that it is a group. Reading is, by necessity, something that we do alone, and so something really has to be BRAIN-RENDINGLY funny to illicit a reaction to the lone reader, sitting in his couch with a stern look of concentration on his face, trying to focus on the messy, messy words. Comedy is easy like that, because you know when you're doing a good job, and there are things to do to maximize your chances of doing a good job, like pushing the audience close together, and minimizing outside distractions. I'm still trying to figure out how all of the different aspects of 'comedy', or maybe even just 'writing' fit together though. I mean, parody, for example, is generally considered a genre of comedy, but then again, 1984 is a parody – and one so brilliant that it continues to reveal new aspects of itself to me almost daily – but I challenge anyone to find a funny line anywhere in that book. (by the way if you can find a funny line in there... fuck you, comedy is subjective, I win! CHAMPIOOOON)

I guess what this all comes down to is that I've been thinking a lot over here, and thinking has been good, although I am ready to rejoin the furious rat race back in Melbourne now, and the remainder of my days in Brisbane are looking longer than I would have liked. Yeeeeeckgh, so restless, so impatient, so jittery at the keyboard. Shudder. Stutter. Itch, itch, itch.

I need to have a fucking shave right now.

Peace, Taco.

Roma Street Gardens

The water makes a sound like trickling as it falls down, not very far – it's almost quiet. Mother and daughter, speaking between awed faces with voices that drift away, they barely disturb the silence. A friend is with them, leans down and takes a picture. Construction-site noises in the background, the melodious grating of a circular blade winds through the greenery. See trees moving but hear no wind. Feel no cold. Breathe shimmering stillness. The water, trickle, trickle.

“Come on!” urges the little girl with her mother and friend, they're behind me now. Some distant crashing is muffled by the all encompassing surrounds, these sounds enter and bounce off a craggy rock face. Maybe a plane, up above? Or just the unidentifiable rushing movements of the world, keeping pace. Staying in movement. Never stops

That was a bird, there was a definite chirp, unmistakeable. Tiny insects hover in front of this scene, too close for eyes to focus. More voices drift in, and out, and the water falls, and then ripples off into the reeds. The constant sounds of silence. Trickle, trickle, trickle.

Peace, Taco.

MICF Wrap-Up and Plans for 'The Future'

Once again, it really has been a long time since I've written in here, and I can feel myself getting out of the habit of writing, and really letting myself off the hook, which essentially goes against the whole reason I started writing on this blog. I think I can rationalize it this time though, and so, because I can, I will... here goes.

Comedy festival finished on Sunday (21/4) and that was a really amazing night. Massive. Huge. I felt like something changed that night – although it could have been because of the acid that we all took, because that darling chemical always gives events a sense of high significance, but I think the night itself was really special. One thing I'll always remember about the night that ended up closing out my first ever comedy festival, was that a group of Station 59 comics, disinterested with the Bollywood-themed closing party at The HiFi Bar, went to the Crown Casino – because it was the only place open – and decided to do a standup gig to seven assorted strangers, picked up from amidst the slot machines by the manically ambitious Sofie Prints. I got one amazing laugh at one point which rippled through the crowd, and yes I can sense the eye-rolls of comics listening to me calling seven drunken men and some comics a 'crowd', but that experience really was different. I don't care what anyone says... ew, look at me up on my soapbox defending myself. Gross.

The festival itself though was awesome, if not completely and utterly exhausting. I bitched out on going to see a show last night even though really I probably could have and still been fine for work this morning (I'm cleaning pubs and restaurants Monday, Wednesday and Friday now, but I'll get to that in a minute). I saw some inspiring work: Simon Keck, Jon Bennett, Daniel Kitson, Blake Mitchell, Setlist. I made some new friends, and some connections for the future, I did a bunch of spots including five at the Exford Late Show which was at times a surprisingly good room, but also lived up its reputation the first night I was there. I feel like this weekend will be full of rest as I finally catch up on the sleep I habitually missed throughout the festival, and hopefully come Monday I'll be back to square one energy-wise, because I feel FUCKING DRAINED, just right here.

So now, here's the plan folks. I'm going to Brisbane for two weeks starting next Wednesday (1/5) where I have a few spots lined up, as well as free accommodation with the lovely Corey White who I saw MC the show 'Undiagnosed' to about twelve people, and so feel unqualified to comment on at this juncture. I hear his comedy is very good, and I am grateful as SHIT to him for offering to put me up in his house for the whole two weeks. The reason I decided to do this trip is basically that for the first time in my life I have found myself in the strange position of having some level of disposable income. I feel squeamish... I don't really feel like I have earned or deserve this money, but I sure am not going to fuck it away on drugs and drinking – even if I wanted to I don't really feel like I have the capacity to be doing that anymore: I need to keep moving. I'm not saying that as a sort of order to myself, it's gone beyond that now. I actually need to keep moving, like I can't stop. I don't know how to not be doing anything any more, and every time I drink I end up being bored and edgy the next day when I'm not doing anything productive. Don't even start with drugs, in the last six months I think I can count two occasions where I've actually taken an amount of drugs large enough to create any sort of after-effect the day, or days after. It would be arrogant of me to say “I'm done” this early in the piece, but I am definitely having a break, and I can't see myself going back there any time soon.

After Brisbane I have a loose idea of a plan that I've been formulating in the days since Sunday, and so, in the interest of having something of substance recorded for my future self to fret over, here it is. My plan for the foreseeable future, may it hang over my head like an ambitious anvil, ready to fall at any minute and crush me:

• I want to write a story-show, or at least a show with a coherent through-line, and I have already decided on the topic, although I won't go into that here because to be honest I don't really think anyone is too interested in an idea. But I've started the earliest of early preparations for the show's creation. On the advice of Kieran Butler I think I might try and figure out at least some of the material on stage, even just to see if I can do it. Just to see if I'm anywhere near able to attempt that yet. This is my new challenge.
  
• I'm going to take this show, which will hopefully be up to half an hour in time for October, to the Melbourne Fringe and perform it as many times as possible at the Station 59 Free Comedy season there.
  
• Between the end of the Melbourne Fringe and the start of the Adelaide Fringe I'll keep workshopping the show and hopefully – and this is the part of the plan I'm not sure about and the part that will probably depend most on the performances during the Melbourne Fringe and my ability to stay focussed and passionate about this idea – it'll be up to around fifty minutes for the Adelaide Fringe, and then I'll take it there.
  
• If Adelaide goes okay, then I'll do the show at next year's MICF at Station 59 Free Comedy again for two weeks.
  
• Finally, if everything has worked out and if my money situation is still holding up in twelve months' time, I'll book my ticket to Edinburgh 2014, and book my spot in the Fringe, and then I'll have a fifty minute show to take over there where I'll hopefully be able to book a spot in one of the Free Comedy venues and do my first overseas shows. If I can make it to Edinburgh then I also want to head over to Spain and do the Camino de Santiago for a month, and with a month in between the two I'll travel around Europe a bit and say hi to some friends from Bolivia and people I've met in Australia.
  

So that's it, that's my plan for the next 18 months, and that's my recap of everything that's happened for me in the last month. Well not everything, but everything my fingers feel ready to write about right now. I'm sorry I haven't been writing, although I don't really know who I'm saying sorry to, because even after I put this on Facebook, probably only twenty people will read it, and you wouldn't have read it if I didn't tell you to anyway. So sorry, to me, but also good job me, you're doing okay, although you could really do with some new clothes to be honest.

Peace, Taco.

Tired

I feel tired. I've been doing so much lately: writing comedy for the festival, gigging 5 or more times a week three weeks straight, tours, cleaning, running in the rat race... not drinking enough water. I feel tired, but it's a good tired, a sign that for the first time in my life I think I am really pushing myself towards something. I think? Or maybe I'm just not getting enough sleep.

Money really isn't an issue at this point; I feel like I barely have enough time to spend the paltry amount that I'm making anyway – for those of you playing at home that's about $500 a week, which actually isn't that paltry at all, but it certainly isn't high-roller shit. I am leaving home in the mornings, every morning, and not coming home for hours. Ten hours. Twelve hours. Hours spent running around completing this or that errand, sitting on trams and trains, heading out to gigs to either do a spot, or sit in the crowd and watch. Learning, I've been learning a lot.

I've been working on this bit that I honestly didn't think would be ready for the festival, but turns out may just squeeze its way in to my show (Two for the Price of Free YES!). This whole bit is basically constructed around the idea that I had one day a few months ago that it'd be really cool to move to a new city where no one whatsoever knows who you are, and then create an elaborate, and completely outlandish fictional backstory for yourself. Nothing malicious – not like 'my family died in a fire' or some shit that would require actual acting and would seem like shameless attention-seeking if exposed... just something harmless, but fun, like oh say, that I was home-schooled. So then I decided I couldn't wait until I left for another country to play this game, and the next best place to play it would be on stage... but it wouldn't be funny if I was the only one in on the joke. Considering that the whole point of comedy is that the audience is in on the joke – and whence cometh their laughter – I'd need to figure out a way to let them in on the joke that was being played on them – that I was lying outright to them for no good reason – whilst not making them the butt of the joke.

Then I remembered the story that I have been telling about the time Tim Clark, bless his cotton socks, told me that I had a nice jacket, only to rescind his compliment moments later after it became apparent that I was going to take his sarcastic jibe at face value and proceed to talk about how much I, too, liked my jacket. He lied to me, for no reason it seems, and I couldn't understand the reasoning behind this not-unheard of social phenomenon. Why do that? Why say, “nice jacket man,” only to add after I had accepted the compliment, “oh no, I was joking, it's shit”... what he did there was exactly what I was planning to do in my lying bit about home-school. If I could tell that story, then tell another, seemingly separate one about home school, and have the audience believe it, then lift the veil and say, “hey, look, it was all a lie,” then they would know how I felt, and the joke would be on Tim, and not on them.

I still have a few reservations about the story, I mean I invented it, from nothing, which feels kind of cool to do – just like Brad Oakes said it would ha. – but still there are only laughs in the setup, not the actual story, and most of those laughs aren't that strong... but I guess my joke writing will improve with time. Hopefully. Fingers crossed.

I've also been trying to write jokes about the news headlines off the Guardian – it doesn't matter which paper really, but I refuse to buy copies of the Feral Scum (thankyou Kieran Butler) or any other trashy cum-rag of a publication just to practise my joke writing. No, no, no; I will not be indebted to Rupert Murdoch in my comedy career. Not now. Not ever. No, no, no, no.

So many no's. I think I am tired. I should stop guessing and have a lie down... but there's still so much I want to do. I've nearly finished reading The War of Art that Richie gave me, and then it's on to Fade To Black (And Disappear) by an Adelaide author whose name I forget right now because I can't be fucked digging in my bag and pulling the book out to read the front cover. No. Fuck. I said no more. FUCK. There they are again. Okay, I'll stop now.

Peace, Taco.

Review of Charles Bukowski's 'Women' [SPOILER ALERT]

I just finished reading Charles Bukowski's 'Women'. Like, just finished it. Just now. For most of the book I had no idea where he was going with the whole thing... it just seemed like one graphic, semi-pornographic sexual encounter after another. I mean, obviously I knew he was going somewhere, because I've read 'Ham on Rye', and 'Post Office', but I had no idea where, or whether it would be anywhere truly interesting, and I had absolutely no inclination whatsoever to begin guessing.

I think 'Women' is by far the best of the three Bukowski books that I've read though, and it definitely resonated with me much more than the other two... the language, he is so detached. Every sexual encounter starts with his eyes roaming up some girl's legs – they're not even girls though, really, just bodies with names on them. Then she undresses and submits to him completely; “I mounted, stuck it in, and then...” is a fair summation of the end of every other chapter in this book, and there are one-hundred and four of them. He jumps from woman to woman to woman to woman, never growing attached to them, or even seeming to care when they walk out on him. At one point around the halfway mark he muses that all of his women leave him, but it is clear that this is only the case because he will take sex wherever he can get it. Only on his terms though. Only ever the way he wants it... he knows how he is, and for most of the book he is aware that he is selfish, and a bastard, and he understands why they all leave. He is seemingly at peace.

The morning hangovers and physical sickness barely seem to drain him, and the paid poetry readings that sustain his lifestyle somehow keep popping up out of nowhere, along with groupies, and fan-mail from easy women. He dismisses the men. But he hardly talks of love – he was married once, but had been in love four times. Now a dirty old man of around sixty, he dreams of the day when he is “an eighty year old fucking an eighteen year old.” Life-long dreams of a professional pervert.

This chauvinistic, evil womaniser has his run of the town for most of the book, and the thing is... and I don't know whether this thing is scary, or sobering, or humbling, or maybe just deliciously tempting in its realism... the thing is, it speaks to me. I don't stand for all men, and I'm sure there are saints out there somewhere among us, but the way Henry Chinaski (Bukowski's literary alter-ego) laps up woman after eager, fawning woman should have most straight men salivating. It's not pretty, and it's not nice, and it sure is pretty fucking uncomfortable, but he gets right to the core of it, at least for me. No wonder there is no mention of his mother... no family, no moral compass or ties to a possibly innocent past. Just a dirty old man, “sucking beer”, puking up blood through three-hundred hangovers a year.

Towards the end though, maybe the last seventy or so pages (out of three-hundred) things start to get a little clouded for Henry Chinaski. The sex is still good – in fact the whores and sluts that he so adores only become more and more sumptuous, their young flesh more and more tempting... but he has also met a girl, Sara, who touches something else in him. He doesn't say he loves her, and I trust him, he is a very honest narrator, and is frank and blunt about his feelings, both to his women, and to the reader. He doesn't love Sara, but he knows that she is 'a good woman', and this is a phrase he uses sparingly only once before. But the difference with Sara as well, is that she won't fuck him. She knows about his continuing conquests, and she suffers through his ongoing selfishness, but she always comes back, and there is something in that that strikes a chord with old, dirty Henry Chinaski. His last few sexual encounters span the whole range of women possibly conceivable: a young, nubile belly-dancer from Canada who gives him the time of his life, and gives it to him again and again; an old, haggard, sagging woman whom he loathes even before she is between his sheets, and infinitely more afterwards; a black hooker who sucks his dick terribly five minutes after meeting him in the car park of a liquor store; a ninety-pound, eighteen year old – at last. He has seen everything. Fondled every part, fucked every crevice. Still Sara waits, over Thanksgiving, Christmas, then she gives herself to him, without his asking and says, “Happy New Years Henry”; they fall asleep together.

After he accepts terrible head from the black hooker for twenty dollars, and then drives her to an intersection where she continues to hitchhike and no doubt solicit more of the same, he makes one last attempt – and there have been many beforehand – to steel his mind against any more fucking around.

“Sara was a good woman. I had to get myself straightened out. The only time a man needed a lot of women was when none of them were any good. A man could lose his identity fucking around too much. Sara deserved much better than I was giving her. It was up to me now.”

This is his final challenge to himself... three-hundred and four pages in and barely one more to go, he convinces himself that he needs to give this good woman a proper chance, because if he lets her slip away, then he will be doomed. Then another girl calls, another admirer, and this is where I was scared. Charles Bukowski was about to offer his opinion, in this last page, in one last conversation between a dirty old man and a juicy, delicious, groaning and spread-legged nineteen-year-old temptress. In the final lines of 'Woman' Charles Bukowski would decree whether, in his humble opinion, it was at all possible for a flawed man to accept the love of a good woman.

Anyone who says that Bukowski is a sexist, chauvinistic pig is probably right... but anyone who says that this is all he is is a single-minded, blind fucking moron. 'Women' is a book that is not afraid to delve past the scared facades that we put in front of ourselves to mask our true desires in our attempts to play the role of the good guy. I'm still not sure if Henry Chinaski is a good guy or not, but I am sure that he is a real guy, about as real a guy as there could possibly ever be in my eyes, and when his time came to decide whether he could be loved in the final pages of this book, my heart was in my mouth, as I felt my fate too, rested in his decision.

He sent her back. And still, there is hope yet.

Peace, Taco.

Adelaide During the Fringe

From Tuesday til Saturday I was in Adelaide seeing friends, Fringe shit, and fam. I planned this trip and bought the tickets pretty much as soon as I got back from my Hometown Christmas last year, but this time around – without everyone having the obligation to spend so much time with their families, and everyone from everywhere being back in town – the trip was way way way way WAY much better. Here's why:

Tuesday I got into town at seven-thirty at night after a brilliant (as always) bus ride involving books, music, and some great ideas and time alone to think. I love those bus rides – there's a reason I always include at least one in each trip home. As soon as I got off the bus I headed straight to the Cranka for some free Tuesday night comedy and caught up with Ross Voss, Josh Cruze, and saw some great comedians who I hadn't seen before. Jesus, what a refreshing change seeing people's sets that I haven't seen ANYTHING from. Being around the same comics all the time in Melbourne, while obviously lovely as it gives a great sense of community, can become exhausting because whenever someone has a good set, you already know more or less how the set is going to go. I can still recognize when someone has done a good set because they have performed well or really captured the audience or whatever, but it's rarely THAT exciting to see someone do well if sixty to eighty percent of what they're doing on stage I have seen before. So seeing my open mic contemporaries in Adelaide do their thing was a great break.

Then the Rhino late show that night was awesome – Will Anderson did some great stuff about framing Adam Hills for a murder by hopping away from the crime scene. Then we somehow got into the Artists' Bar. Then we got drunk. Then we went home. By the way 'Home' for this trip was Phil's place in Kent Town, which was a fucking great change in and of itself because it was a ten minute walk from town, and the posse that he lives with are fucking sick. Sick as dawgs.

Wednesday I woke up earlyish with a hangover, me Elle and Leon went to breakfast at ETC which was always one of my favourite Adelaide breakfast spots. We consumed, then I sweated my shit down to the DMV and got my full license. Tick. Then back home, broke into the guys' house through Leon's bedroom window and crashed out for the afternoon under a fan waiting for MA BOIIII S. Rouse to call, but finally having to pay a Twenty-Five-Dorrah cab to his place during rush hour after he was to shit to get out of bed all day. We reminisced over Pool Party (WHOSE PARTY?!!) days in Empire and then I had a gig at the Ed Castle that night where I also met the lovely German, Sarah for the first time after chatting to her for ages on CouchSurfing since mid-year. The gig went okay – good enough, although I felt I performed a really tight set, but the crowd reaction wasn't AS amazing as I would've liked, but I was happy enough – then me, Elle and Josh Wills jumped into the Artists' Bar again after Rouse went home to crash.

Thursday: another hangover, another breakfast, another cruisy afternoon in Kent Town that ended with the most brilliant snap-decision of recent times with me, Phil, Leon and Nick Fuckenwhatever unanimously agreeing in about five seconds to go to the Tap Inn and have beers. After this I went on to dinner with the fam and shaking Dad's hand after his last day of working some shitty job that he's had for the last ten years and moving into semi-retirement at the tender, supple age of forty-five. He now plans to become a stay-at-home wife and paint the house while Mum Dawgz is off making DEM STAX. Now THAT'S Feminism, bitches!

After family dinner I went off to see David Quirk's Fringe show which was fwarking brilliant I have to say, notwithstanding the tech blunder that sort-of ruined the ending. I can forgive that, the show was great, and I still need to write to that dude and tell him how much I liked it because it really was that good... if any of you reading have a chance to see David Quirk's 'Shaking Hands With Danger' at either the Adelaide Fringe (until march 16^th I think?) or the Melbourne International Comedy Festival later this month, do it. Drinking and deep hangs with Lucy at hers, and then the Rhino Room Late Show again capped off my Me Time before I headed to the Botanic to romp some cunts I'd never met before in doubles pool and crash out around three AM watching something I don't remember on the laptop. Or maybe it was music? Three days into this journey I start to get mixed up about details.

Friday played host to another breakfast/lunch thingo at the Austral with Phil and Eliesa, and then meeting up with Sarah again for a CouchSurfers' picnic in the Botanical Gardens. I convinced my new CS friends to join me in jumping the fence into WOMAD that night to see the Cat Empire – I decided to jump even though I had a press pass, a move that infuriated Phil after I lost his pass in a drunken haze later that night, but for which I'm sure he has forgiven me, and will understand. Adrenaline baby. A-dre-na-line. Before WOMAD though, we went to the UniBar for some final nostalgia and I caught up with Sammy B and Chess – DA BOIZ from Immanuel College. We spat the shit over jugs of cider and laughed heartily as if we were seventeen again. I know I'm not really allowed to reminisce that heavily because I'm still only twenty-two, but whatever, fuck you. I remember shit too you old fuck reading this. That's right, you. Old.

After loosing my shit to the Cat Empire (six years since the last time) me and Jaleesa the Dutch girl went to Trashbags in EC and I capped off my stay catching up with the Kings of Hindley St: Johnny Monday, Jason 'Terror Terror' Petersen, Jake Baker, Liam Ball, and a million other cats that were there that I won't start to list off now mainly because I don't remember shit and I'd probably start guessing, and guessing poorly. When I woke up at ten am on Saturday, I looked at my phone and confirmed what I knew instinctively was the case anyway – I had missed my bus. Mum bought me a plane ticket because she's a diamond, and I spent the rest of the day in Glandore, spending some time with my little bro watching Louie off my hard drive, and then driving around with Eliesa in order to make up the loss of the press pass to Phil. I bought the boys a bottle of wine for letting me crash at their place, and then at nine pm, Eliesa drove me to the airport, and an hour later I was inside a flying steel box, soaring over the country on my way back to Melbourne.

So that's why this trip was better than the one over Christmas. Any questions?

Peace, Taco.

It's Been Too Long

It's been too long, so I have to write something, three weeks almost, but what to write? Updates? Last week I had six gigs – one Sunday, two Tuesday, one Wednesday, one Thursday, and an MC spot Saturday. One of those went okay, three went very well (I'd at least say well, but at least two I was quite happy with), one went to shitsville and was me eating dicks for five and a half minutes, and one (the MC spot) went averagely for the first half, but then pretty well for second half. Now that I'm breaking it down like that, that's a pretty good ratio – and I think I'm being fairly honest with myself there.

That was a good week, not just because of the volume of gigs, but also because of the quality, those three that went really well felt great while I was doing them, and with the solid five minutes that I've got on me now, as well as with the twenty or so minutes of other material, I'm feeling fairly confident going into my run of ten fifteen-minute spots at the comedy festival. Also this week I printed off my flyers for the festival – eighty A4 sheets each with four flyers on them – so that's three-hundred and twenty A6 flyers ready to be given out to people that I meet in the next three weeks... I think I can do it. I'll be pretty happy with myself if I can hand out all of those flyers by the end of the first week of my run.

What else, what else? I'm going to Adelaide for a few days (Tuesday the 5^th to Saturday the 9^th) which should be cool, doing a spot at the Ed Castle and hopefully catching up with a wide array of crew down there during the fringe. The fringe is going to be sick, and I've got a few cool shows lined up that I want to see as well – Wolf Creek the Musical should be sick. Rhino Room Late Show should be sick. Grills at Phil's and jumping into WOMAD, it's all going to be sick. When I get back I'll have to sort out this Centrelink Bullshit that I'm too confused and tired to go into right now, but suffice to say that it needs to be sorted, and quickly, or else I'll be sitting in a room full of lifetime fuckup losers learning how to write cover letters and 'effectively present myself' for job interviews.

This has been an update from Tugzy, your pal, out in the midst.

Peace, Taco.

On the Road and Other Medications

Reading Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road' the first time was a bit of a blur for me to be honest, I was in Bolivia, and I read the entire thing on my HTC Desire HD screen (that's a phone, if you were unsure) in less than twenty-four hours. Most of those hours were spent on a bus, sitting next to a Bolivian kid who was sixteen or seventeen if I remember correctly. I read the book for hour-long stints at a time, and then would turn to the kid and continue the conversation we'd been having before I had dipped off into my reading and he back into the 'cincuenta centavo' (50 Cent) playing on his iPod. I don't think I rushed through it, but the book has a real habit of lifting you out of whatever you are doing and taking you away on the journey, the road, off into the distance with it... so I definitely read it quicker than I would have a normal book. I'm reading it for the second time now though – I'm typing it out actually, word-for-word on my laptop – and this time I'm taking it much slower.

I've just reached the start of part two, and I'm only going about four or five pages each sitting, because to type about that many pages takes around forty minutes to an hour, depending on how good a day my fingers are having. But I'm loving the fact that it's so slow. I almost forget about this ongoing project every few days, but it sits there – the Penguin-Paperback copy of 'On the Road', the clothes-peg I use to hold the pages open, and the hardcover children's 'The Fun-To-Learn Picture Dictionary' that I use as a board to peg the pages of the book onto – it all sits there on the back corner of my desk, waiting to be opened whenever I feel a little desperate. Typing out books is something that I've grown to really depend on in the past year; first it was Orwell's '1984', and now this. It's a great way to immerse myself in someone else's words and thoughts, forcibly and directly, and take my busy mind off of whatever frantic problems are troubling me. The idea came from Hunter S. Thompson and my former obsession with his wild, drug-addled life and persona, but now that I've appropriated his activity as my own I can see benefits completely separate from what he described – or what were described on his behalf. He did it to “see what it felt like to write a great novel”, if I remember correctly – he typed out F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' – but his motivation is of much lesser concern to me. My aims are much more simple, but much more immediate, and vital as well.

I just passed over a part in 'On the Road' where Dean Moriarty has left his second wife, Camille, with their child to go back to his first wife, Marylou, and beg on his knees for her to take him back. She does, and in Kerouac's own words;

“She understood Dean; she stroked his hair; she knew he was mad.”

More reassuring words have never been written, and upon typing them out as my eyes flitted over the page I felt a wave of understanding and hope wash over me. I recently watched a video of Neal Cassady, upon whom Moriarty is famously based, when he was on the bus with the Merry Pransters in the early-mid sixties and to be perfectly honest, he looks and sounds like a complete lunatic. A madman. But sometimes it's hard not to feel, in the furious changing tides of life, that I am mad as well. Although maybe not as outwardly eccentric as Cassady/Moriarty, I'm sure every one of us feels at some point as if they are the exception to some sane rule of the world, an outlier on the bell curve of acceptable normalcy. “Am. I. Insane?”

Well maybe you are, and maybe I am, but Jack Kerouac, in a surely unplanned but far from accidental stroke-of-genius example here, shows that no matter how crazy you think you are, or how crazy you are by everyone else's admission, you still have a place in this world, and you can still find someone to love you. Dean Moriarty, with his head in the hands of his sweetheart, is proof enough of that.

Sometimes I wonder when I'll get tired of the violent up-and-down cycle of my mood and of my life and of the world that I constantly create around myself. I find myself hoping that that day will come soon; “soon, surely, soon I'll find it within myself to settle down and find a level of balance in my life, soon I'll be able to relax.” But every time I find myself repeating this tired inner dialogue, I am tempted, once again, by the promise of a higher tomorrow, and the irresistible, surging rise of a brand new peak. For as long as I am tempted by these peaks though, there will be a frightening low waiting in the trough, and that's where Jack Kerouac and his famous tale of freedom come in. Whenever I feel like I need something else to hold onto, to support me while I ride out the lows and confront the fear, I turn to the pages of this book – and when it's done, the pages of another classic that I'll start typing out – to escape to the open spaces of someone else's words, and leave the dark churnings of my own mind behind for a while. In this way, I remind myself that a new high is coming, and peace is a comfort that, for the moment, I do not need. Not just yet, Tugzy. Not today.

Peace, Taco.

Last Night I Had a Good Gig

I'm heading out to do my first MC gig in a second, but I thought I'd sit down and write something first before I slide into the engulfing black that promises to be Saturday night. After I finish writing this, I'm going to change into my new jeans – hoping they fit properly – and walk out of the house with my notebooks, wallet and phone. Then I'll go get some fried rice from Loi Loi, around the corner. I love fried rice. I've been practising eating with chopsticks.

This MC gig – it's at Voltaire, a little upstairs performance space in North Melbourne that hosts an open mic every Sunday – isn't a comedy night, oh no no no. It's a burlesque show, so already, things are looking interesting. I'm excited though, because the fact that it's not a comedy show means that the audience, and even the performers, will have never heard any of my material before. I have a completely clean slate. Add to that the optimism that I've been feeling lately about my pool of material as a whole – I think I might almost be up to twenty usable, if not killer, minutes of stuff – and this gig is looking like it might just go okay.

Last night I had a spot at Fishface comedy in Footscray that went fucking brilliantly, which was nice. I tried a couple of bits that I've written in the last week and hadn't performed yet, as well as a bit that I did for the first and second time this week, and my bit about birdwatching and my mum that is turning into a pretty strong opener that reveals something about my personal life. The two new bits: last and second last, both killed, but the last one did especially well. It involves me yelling and screaming 'DUH DUH DERRRRR' whilst stomping around the stage for about a minute, and I'm really excited by it because I think I may have managed to write a bit that breaks out of the normal formula of 'stand on stage and say something funny' that stand up threatens to be trapped by, whilst still containing a conventional 'set-up, punchline' structure at its heart. I think I'm being a little pretentious here, and maybe reading Stewart Lee's book where he analyses three of his shows with liner notes has pushed me over the edge and into a pool of self-congratulatory wank. Hopefully not, friends. I need to remain vigilant.

All I think I'm trying to say here, is that I'm really looking forward to this MC gig, and I'm hoping it goes well and I get to do a good amount of material including some new stuff. I'll have to work on winning the crowd over with some of my more bankable material and then coming out with the weirder stuff, whilst still making sure that the stage is set for the burlesque acts themselves. Seven at the start of each bracket... wait... are there brackets in a burlesque show? Eh, this will all be a strange learning experience. I just want to get on stage, to be honest.

Feeling dangerously selfish, maybe? Over-confident after a good gig? Only time will tell.

Peace, Taco.

Living on my Birthday

Yesterday I met the most ridiculous person I have met in a long time... jesus shit! I went to some writing club meeting in South Melbourne with little expectations considering the previous meeting in December wasn't so much a 'writing club' as it was a bunch of people who share writing in common meeting up for a drink. I mean, that could be called a writing club, I guess, but it wasn't really what I had in mind... it can't have been all that terrible though, because I went back, albeit half an hour late.

So when I walked in some lady – who I later discovered was a 'writing guru' (someone else's words, but not difficult to believe) – was talking about journalism and a writers' group/course thingo she'd set up and I sat at a stool on the far end of the table and proceeded to crackle in a violent ray of sun that was beaming through the front door of the bar. A sun-tan indoors – well life is just full of surprises? Tee-hee-hee. Anyway, Mrs Guru (Valerie, her name was) was interesting and she had some cool stuff to say, but the ridiculous person that I met wasn't our speaker, no no, she was a lady by the name of Samantha.

Samantha was a early/mid-thirties (I hope that guess is accurate) writer who had been sending off a few bits and pieces of comedy writing to competitions and doing quite well, but what grabbed me was when she said to the group that her preferred method of writing was sitting down with a bottle of red wine and headphones full of hip hop. YES! My People! She told me about her writing, and then her life before her writing, which had consisted of about a decade all around the world (Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Egypt, South America) as a tour guide for a travel company. She had been taught how to play backgammon by Sean Connery and serenaded by Alanis Morissette, and received a donkey from native people in some far flung corner of the world... the details elude me at this point, friends, as I stand in awe of a person who has truly stepped up to life and nutted the beast between it's piercing eyes. She said that at twenty-three she was engaged and stuck in a dead end job, but one day she woke up, looked at her fiance and said, “I really don't like you”, and within two weeks she was off. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. These are the people that we all need to know, my friends. This is the person that everyone should be.

And then, a few days before that, there was another lady, this time someone I met on a tour, who was originally from Adelaide (of all the promising beginnings) but had lived in South Africa for twenty-five years including the apartheid era and Nelson Mandela's release from prison. She told me about how many households, including her own, had had black slaves during the era of segregation. One day, after a law had passed which would have nullified the black/white segregation of beaches within six months, she and her kid went to a whites only beach. They also took their slave's (I think she used a different word, but I heard slave) kid along, and the kid would have been no more than ten years old at this point. So while the segregation law was due to be repealed in six months – the decision had already been made and passed – for the time being the beach was still 'whites only', so when they got there a police officer saw the young kid and told the mother that she had to take him off of the beach or they would all be arrested. That's right, that shit happened. Imagine the kid – how confused. Imagine the mother, and the looks, and imagine people actually abiding by these laws and legitimately believing in their righteousness to the point where they knew they were going to be defunct soon, but until then the plan was racism as usual.

She talked about Nelson Mandela and the rugby game depicted in that movie Invictus and she talked about the feeling of national pride and togetherness when Mandela walked out onto the field wearing the national team's jersey. She told me about his ex-wife, who was apparently a part of some underground group and used to send her harems of male entourage on assassination missions. Mandela had to leave her and distance himself from the warring clans – the divides between different groups of black people in South Africa were apparently just as pervasive as the one that we heard about on the news. She lived through that, she saw it first hand. What have I seen? Maybe I've been a part of something important already, I just don't know it yet... maybe the eyes of history will look back and see Melbourne, 2013 as a strange pocket of human existence... maybe. Maybe not.

Crazy, disjointed thoughts on this sunny February day, this day that happens to be my twenty-second birthday. Samantha, this outlandish specimen of a person, has forced me to look at what I am doing and make absolutely certain that what I am doing with my life is exactly what I want to be doing. How can I possibly spend one single day doing anything other than that, when there are people out there in the dankest pockets of existence being given donkeys by villagers and playing board games with James Bond. Not a single second, my friends, not a solitary fucking moment can we afford to waste. Wring with all your strength, and drain this life for every drop. Be sure, it can be done.

Peace, Taco.

On Humility

I just went on the r/StandUpComedy subreddit and had a look at a post by a comedian who said he'd been doing comedy for about a year and was asking everyone to reply to his thread with what their biggest achievements thus far in stand up had been. Proud moments, goals for the future etc. This thread excited me because while I go onto this subreddit every now and then, I don't usually stay for very long because it seems to be mostly filled with people posting videos of gigs and asking for feedback or people linking to comedy specials by comedians that I don't find terribly hilarious... and just a quick aside: I don't have a problem with people posting footage of their gigs and asking for feedback, in fact I think it's great, but I'll get to the slight problem I have with it which may not be a problem at all but just me being a dick... in a little bit.

Anyway, so I went on to check out this thread and straight away I was pleased to see a bunch of long responses, and I started reading. After reading all comments though (only sixteen, but they were all pretty lengthy) I was a little disappointed. I had hoped to find... well actually, I don't know what I had hoped to find on here, and maybe sharing comedy advice on the internet just isn't the same as sharing it in person, but I'll say now that I didn't find what I thought I had.

To me, the way the thread came off was just a bunch of comedians, in similar positions to myself, becoming excited by the invitation to talk about themselves and the growth they have experienced in the first stages of their 'careers'. It seemed like a bunch of egos competing for screen time, basically – fevered egos, you might even say (Eh! Eh!). None of the long comments had replies underneath them, they were all just individual replies about the particular poster's achievements and goals which basically said to me that these people weren't reading here to exchange actual advice, they were just looking for a forum to gloat upon... actually I lie, there was one comment that started a conversation: one between two comics, the first comment had called a particular city's scene 'cliquey', there was a friendly disagreement, and then plans to meet up with a slightly back-peddled explanation by the original poster. Fevered egos really, but who am I to judge?

I'm not even sure about the reasons that I had for coming on to this page? I mean, to be completely honest, I had no intention of posting my 'achievements' or 'goals' on there, but not because I don't like bragging... just because I don't really care about bragging to people that are in no position to get me anything for my hard bragging work. But I had a bit of a think about the reason why some of the advice that these people were handing out for free over the internet was that I sort of half-resented, half-dismissed them as idiots. Petty. Pathetic. I found myself thinking, “who the fuck is this cocky tosser? Thinking he can dole out advice like this when he's only been doing comedy for *re-reads start of comment* TWO YEARS!!!” That may be the problem with comedy advice over the internet... it's all well and good to talk about the giving and receiving of advice in person and there is a valid point to be made about the fact that it doesn't matter whether you think a comedian is good or not, advice is advice and should be taken gratefully. The fact of the matter though, is that it is a narcissistic reflex to reject advice that comes from a source whose credibility you don't have positive proof for.

There is a reason piano teachers give recitals and put themselves last, there is a reason that past football players often slot nicely into coaching roles, and it is the same reason that I don't feel comfortable being told about 'the industry' or given tips on witing by some fevered ego sitting behind a keyboard on the other side of the world. It's because we are all the same fevered egos, and we only like to be told what to do by people we know can do it at least as well, or hopefully better, than we can. Well... I don't know, maybe you're not all that shallow. All I know is the day I can come onto a forum like this, read the comments, and take a meaningful piece of advice from something someone has said without requiring proof of their talents; on that day I will finally have learned humility.

Peace, Taco.

Daydreams

Today I was eating a banana and daydreaming on the tram on my way down to lunch with a bunch of comedians. I had already finished my first banana and chucked the peel in the bin before I got on the tram, but I was about to be faced with the problem of what to do with the second peel: there are no bins on the tram, and it was looking like a solid ten minute wait between my projected banana finish-time and my stop, where I could get out and find a bin. Ten minutes holding a banana peel? Pffft... not likely, so I thought about throwing it out the window.

The tram coasted past the police station on the corner of Church St and Bridge Rd and I imagined throwing the peel out the half-open window and it landing on the bonnet of one of the three police cruisers parked on the side of the road. Glorious, I could see it there. To throw it out of the window accurately and make sure it landed on the car I would probably have had to stand up, turn around and aim my throw carefully, but if I did it deliberately then I'd run the risk of someone seeing – it was broad daylight and the tram was stopping at the lights and opening its doors. If someone – a police officer maybe? – saw me throw the peel intentionally onto their shiny police car, then I'd be in trouble. They probably couldn't pin me with much, maybe a fine for littering or at worst some trumped-up vandalism charge, but regardless, I don't need that right now. The fine for littering is probably over a hundred dollars, and I need to pay rent god DAMN it.

I imagined the police officer, just walking out to his car after grabbing a coffee or whatever police do in the station, when he sees a young, dark-haired, olive-skinned youth wearing a red Adidas jacket intentionally throw a banana peel out of a tram window at his vehicle. He would yell, “OI!”, drop his coffee on the ground and give chase. “Stop the tram! OI! YOU!”
At this point I'd be sitting in the tram, fretting and trying to think of how to get out of my fine, the cute couple sitting across from me would be smirking at me, having seen what I'd done, and now knowing they were about to see me get caught. I would run up to the front of the tram and beg the tram driver to keep going; “Pretend you didn't hear him! Please dude, just go!”

And he probably would go, because he's cool. He doesn't like cops either, and it's perfectly plausible that he didn't see or hear the police officer, who is now just an angry, but receding figure in his side-mirror, yell 'stop'. After another couple stops though, the tram driver would tell me that I had to get out, I couldn't stay in the tram – he'd be remembering his responsibility here, plus what if the cop called in another car to intercept the tram? He wouldn't want to get involved in this thing. But all the while I'd be reassuring myself that it was only a banana on a police car – how could he possibly care that much about a little, frivolous act of trivial civil disobedience. I'm sure police get that shit all the time...

I get out of the tram, and wonder where I'm going to walk now, because I still need to get to lunch, but before I can really do anything I hear more shouting, and see the angry, yelling figure running up the slight hill on Church St. Running right towards me. WHAT THE FUCK?! Overzealous motherfucker... so I run. Bolt down a side street and into the suburbs, but I know he saw where I was running, so I know I have to get away. I need to hide somewhere, I need to blend in. I stumble upon a sunny park at the end of the street with a playground and two single mums playing with their kids. Some guy in skins is doing laps of the oval before lunch and a girl is sitting on the hill reading a book with the midday sun on her back. I run, panting, up to her and sit down, still looking over my shoulder.
“We've been talking all morning.” I try to run her through my alibi.
“What? Who are you?
“It doesn't matter, look, we've been talking all morning, okay? I've been here with you all morning.”
The shouting comes from behind us and the cop charges over the little hill and runs down it, straight at me and dives, arms out and face red with fury. Tackle. He lands on top of me and we both go flying a good couple metres along the grass before he pins me to the ground and shouts something about a little prick. My ribs feel broken, I can't move, everything hurts.
“What the fuck?!” the girl jumps up and screams, looking accusingly at the officer.
“This young man is under arrest for wilfully vandalising police property! THE CHASE IS OVER BUD!”
“What chase, what are you talking about? We've been sitting here all morning!” She sticks to the script perfectly, and at that precise moment, I fall in love.

During the lengthy court proceedings that draw out over many long and arduous months, I learn her name, and her birthday, and her likes and dislikes and all her favourite things as we fight in the halls of justice against police brutality. I even remember the colour of her eyes: green. She is my witness and with her help I win a victory worth millions in compensation for the injuries I sustained, I was an innocent bystander randomly attacked by a deranged agent of the law. My injuries keep me from work and I lay a spurious claim to a life-long disability pension. Me and my beautiful witness kiss outside the courtroom, and then go off to spend our millions on eating, drinking, and being merry. I propose to her in the park where we met and for the rest of our lives we are happy, and in love.

I imagine this all, while I am sitting on the tram holding the now-finished banana peel in my hand. I imagine it, but it never happens, because I am way too scared of getting caught and fined for littering. Instead the peel goes under the seat, and I brush my hands clean, before pulling out my notebook and writing the story I am not yet brave enough to live.

Peace, Taco.

On Stragglers

I remember a conversation with Brodie a few weeks ago about Adelaide, Melbourne, and the dozens of people who seem to be stuck in between. I couldn't put an exact figure on it, but there would probably be at least ten people that I know who are caught in some premature stages of moving over to Melbourne, or saying that they are moving, or thinking about moving, or wanting to move but not knowing how. Some of them I trust when they say that they are coming, I know that they'll get here when they are ready, and some, on the other end of the spectrum, I know are just sitting around puffing on pipe dreams, and I'll be lucky to see them down here for a weekend.

Brodie and I were talking about this while we sat out the front of our 3121 abode, he was smoking cigs and I was probably eating stir fry of some sort, it was probably around six in the evening. Tommy Martin was supposed to come over and live with Lolly and Tim, but he's doing something at uni now. Phil is still sorting his shit out in Adelaide before he makes the jump. My mate Jayden, and to a lesser extend his partner in shit-talking T. Wood, have talked about coming over many a time, Jayden even going as far as to say that he almost has a job lined up. Chris... well, Chris is a bit of a lost cause at this stage. But there are plenty more, people who are 'coming' to Melbourne, just not yet. Just not now, just wait, hold up while I get my shit sorted.

This isn't some post railing against those people and trying to paint them as lazy, or dumb, or useless, not at all, and I know that sometimes you need to lay your plans properly before you hatch them or else they'll go sour. A few people who have said they are coming have my genuine trust, I know they'll make it over here, it's only a matter of time. But what Brodie said in the midst of this idle list-making struck me as a bit of fair warning to anyone who has ever had even the most cursory thought about leaving Adelaide and coming to join the youth of the world in Melbourne. “Yeah, maybe they'll make it down,” he said, “but it won't be for a few years at least, and by the time they get here the party will be over and we'll all have moved on to bigger and better things.” He said it like it wasn't even news. Like that's the way things were always going to be, and it was as obvious as the colour of the sky, but I had never even considered it that way.

The party will come to an end, eventually, but not because anyone says it has to, it'll just come to pass, some moment will fly by and the Melbourne vibe will be finished with. I've heard Chris, several times, bemoan his lateness in arriving to the town scene in Adelaide. “I can't believe I missed those few years of partying with you guys, I don't even know what I was doing?” I've heard him spill these words out after again hearing the stories of climbing cranes or lighting fires or Block Party or stupid, one night absinthe fling-benders. So why are you missing it again, then? I don't know... just know what you're doing, I guess. If you have a plan and you're doing something, make sure you know why, or at least have a fair idea. Don't be putting off what you really want to do in favour of what seems easier now, because what you really want might not be there forever.

Peace, Taco.

Understanding Cliches

I'm starting to understand a few things a lot better lately. Things that other people have said, and yes, some of them are cliched to the hilt... but things are cliched for a reason, namely, that they are often true.

Hunter S. Thompson said – and no, I can't remember where, but he did say it – that “music is fuel”. He sort of approached that realization by talking about how most people have a very sentimental attachment to music and they over-complicate their relationship with music by making it into some all-mighty force, some god to worship that saves them from the black abysses and carries them through life. I feel you there, Hunter, there was some video by a fairly run-of-the-mill late-emo band whose name I forget that I remember had the band playing their song life, interspersed with footage of their fans, all emoed out, staring into the camera and saying how music had 'saved their life' while choking back tears and shrieking. Ok, fair enough, if you feel that way. But what HST said is beginning to resonate very much with me because even though I still have an intense connection to some of my favourite artists, music as a whole is more like a thing that I find keeps me going when I get bored. The sensation of finding new music and listening to something – discovering it for the first time – is pretty hard to match, and that's where the analogy to fuel comes in I think: finding a whole bunch of new music over the last few days has given me so much energy and from feeling pretty shitty on Saturday afternoon, I suddenly feel pretty damn good. Great, even. And if we are going to get really picky or defensive about the 'music saved my life' thing, well music is just the medium through which amazing artists work, really. It's not music itself that saved you from ending it all when you were fifteen, it was the artist – The Used, or Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, or Bullet for my Valentine, or whatever guitar-saviour you happened to stumble upon when you needed help. They are responsible.

The next thing that I've started to understand a whole lot better, and I realize now that there are only two 'things', even though at the start I said that there would be 'a few'. Oops... the next thing is that thing that comedians tend to say about comedy, that they, “feel like they can be themselves when they are on stage.” Nothing sounds more cliched and over-sentimental, I recoil at the thought of ever saying those words to someone without a meaty preface and some damn strong context, but it seems that they are starting to become true. For me. That's right. When I first thought them I thought the speakers were trying to say that they don't have the courage to be themselves in other situations, or trying to imply that they are somehow being brave by getting up on stage and 'being themselves'. Those explanations don't really make complete sense though, and so when Rach and I were in the middle of an afternoon-long 'talk' ('talk' as in 'we need to talk' talk) and the conversation came round to my love of standup, it started to hit me. On stage, it's so much easier for the things that I say and the way that I am to align with my internal monologue – that ever-present voice inside my head that represents the way that I would ultimately like to express myself but that I can never perfectly match because of the limiting distance between my brain and my mouth. On stage, there is no one talking back, and diluting my thoughts with their silly external opinions in real time: this is both a good and bad thing. It's a good thing because I can get whatever thoughts I have out there without interruption, even if, admittedly, at this stage the thoughts that I'm 'getting out there' aren't that groundbreaking or important (“it's not so easy for guys to pee standing up, you better RECOGNIZE!”). It's a bad thing though because sometimes it's good to have someone else keeping my thoughts reined in, in real time, because if they are allowed to run wild and unchecked then there is the very real possibility of my unrestrained ego having a field day and saying something stupid and regrettable. Something that I don't really mean, that maybe seemed fair at the time, after five straight minutes of me, me, ME!!!

And I think that's just about enough of exactly that, for now. I downloaded a pretty cool skip-hop/ambient mix yesterday from the Friends of Friends mixtape series, and it feels like my day is amping on the up-and-up. Day time. Yes.

Peace, Taco.

...aaaaand we're back

Two weeks exactly since my last post, and things have changed quite a bit in those two weeks, but I don't even want to talk about those things. I just want to sit. I want to write something. I just found this mixtape by a dude called Joey Bada$$ whose name I have heard around the place in the last few months, but as is always the case with new music, I've been way late to jump onto the new stuff coming out, even if it is TRAGICALLY up my alley. Basically the idea behind this guy and his crew (Pro Era) is that they love the 90's New York hip hop sound, and they are making music in the style that came out of the greatest city in the world during the Golden Era. I cannot express how much I would have absolutely lost my mind over this about eighteen months ago. Two years ago. This would have been the most amazing thing in the world. Now, it's just a nice surprise.

Today has been a nice surprise, sunny outside, and at ten-thirty I woke up after getting to bed at four-thirty in the morning, and felt great. I felt so great, in fact, that I went for a run with the Vintage Beatlab Podcast number twenty pumping through the headphones I found at the Workers last night. Luck luck luck motherfuckers, it's coming in through the windows.

I've been stressing this week about the looming rent day on the sixteenth, which is tomorrow now, and I was about ready to cruise down to the bank with a pocket full of coins and fifty bucks I'd borrowed off of Benny to pump my account up to what would have been about fifty cents above the required amount. Shit was deep. Things were getting thingy. But then, just as I was finally contemplating the beginning of preparations to leave, I saw an email come in – PAY SLIP. I'd forgotten about my pay from the one night I worked at Yah Yah's on the weekend. That's A-Hunned-and Twenty-Fo' of them sweet sweet dorrah ladies and gentlemen. Crisis averted. The lucky streak continues.

Tonight I'm going to kick the football around with Rich and Mick in Flagstaff Gardens – and yes, by football I do mean soccer ball... oh how I await the day when I don't feel the need to clarify on that point. Then, after a bit of social outdoorsing, I've got a gig at Stomach Ache in Collingwood where I'm OPENING of all things, and have a seven minute spot. I've written a bit of new shit over the past few days and am actually feeling okay about it. This week is going to be all about new material. Heaps of new. I've been getting a bit lazy on that front I think.

Okay, so maybe I will talk about what's been happening lately, I guess I kind of can now, I feel okay about it. Not great, but okay. Rach and I broke up. I mean, we talked for ages and it was shaky and we couldn't come to a decision, but I think I've sussed out that I need to be by myself. Yeah. That's what's going to happen. Who cares. HAH! This music is so fucking good. The 1999 Mixtape by Joey Bada$$ – it came out in June last year – so about the time that I was heading over to Melbourne DAYM SUHN... but I'm recommending it now. Listen.

Wow that feels good, finally, something written down. Stay tuned, whoever is tuned at the moment, I feel a resurgence coming on. Fuck, I just jinxed it.

Peace, Taco.

What was Two-Thousand and Twelve?

Last year started with a crusty-eyed glance out of a second-story bedroom window in the Cactus Hostel in La Paz Bolivia. As I focussed my vision and adjusted to the harsh light coming in through the thin, high-altitude air, I saw a condom – mine, fresh from the early-morning ,sloppy, drunk frecking only a few hours before – dangling off of an electricity cable over the street and dripping Nobel Prize Winners onto the pavement below. Two-Thousand and Twelve was a good year.

When I came back from Bolivia it was the middle of February, and I had a girl travelling from France – the other side of the world – to Australia to come and be with me. No story has ever begun more beautifully, but it only took me five weeks between her decision and her arrival for me to ruin it... not that I'm bitter or angry at myself, these things just happen, and the luxury of time passed allows me to speak so frankly about it. But I messed that one up, and hurt a lovely girl quite unnecessarily in the process, she really was lovely. She really is. Lovely. We were together for two weeks full of shame and falsity and when everything unravelled it took only a few days to destroy a summer's worth of good memories. They weren't destroyed forever, I look back and smile now, but when it was happening, it was tough. Easter was tough. I bawled my eyes out after she left in the side-street behind the Cranka just of Rundle, but after that I couldn't cry anymore, which surprised me a little. Two-Thousand and Twelve surprised me.

I stayed at uni for another semester, but you know me – and by you, I mean me, because let's face it, I'm talking to myself here – I sat around and did the minimum required to feel fulfilment at the end... that's two years of a three year degree finished, but I can't see the final year materializing in the near future to be honest. I volunteered at a Salvation Army store because I thought it would look good on my resume and I couldn't think of someone who would give me a nice reference – OH! That's the other thing, I spent like six months desperately unemployed – the first six months of this year. Jesus that was terrible, I don't ever want to be that unemployed again, lucky I turn twenty-two in a month and qualify for Centrelink (YES!)(Yes?). Two-Thousand and Twelve was skint, and really, really slow to get started.

I finally landed a job around June selling energy door-to-door for a joke of a man named Nathan in his AIDA franchise in Adelaide. That job lasted for two and a half weeks and was easily the worst stretch of employment I've ever had, even if it was also the shortest... a few funny things happened at that place though: getting screamed at by the office pussy for lighting up in the back of his brand-new car and spending the day at the pub instead of knocking doors. Roaming the streets of some shitty suburban region of mid-northern Adelaide belting out Ed Sheeran's 'The A Team' between houses and sitting by the river under the bridge in Black Forest hiding from the boss... not everything about that place was terrible. The people and the routine got me out of the house for about twelve days, and the brutal stupidity of my situation for those two and a half weeks finally pushed me over the edge and into Melbourne. Two-Thousand and Twelve was dumb.

I just remembered that we're supposed to be pronouncing it 'twenty-twelve'. Sorry guys, too bad, looks like the programming hasn't quite sunk in has it? Two-thousand and Twelve. I'm not changing just because it's quicker – I'm going to need a really clever piece of marketing directed at me from 180 degrees backwards and wrapped in chocolate to get me to kick this inefficient habit of pronunciation. Two-Thousand and Twelve sounds sexier.

Melbourne has been a constant firestorm of new faces, busy evenings, words, pictures, and no pedestrians... that doesn't really sound like a firestorm does it? I think I'm trying to be over-dramatic... but Twenty-Twelve was a bit like that as well... inconsistent. I found a calling this year – maybe that's a bit over-dramatic as well, but it sounds ok to me, not completely superficial. Stand up comedy has given me a place to go where before there was only the night stretching out past sunset and it has filled the void that used to bring so much dangerous introspection. I finally feel like I am going somewhere, and doing something with purpose, not just because I know it's healthy for me to be filling my time with things. Two-Thousand and Twelve has given me something that I am going to be able to carry around with me for the rest of my life – a purpose. Don't ask me what that is just yet, I'm not that far, I'm still figuring these things out, but Two-Thousand and Twelve helped. Thanks Two-Thousand and Twelve, cheers for the hand.

Quote of the year, although I think I might have actually heard it last year to be honest, is as follows:

There is no way to happiness,
happiness is the way

That's Buddha, apparently, but it doesn't really matter who it is, just what it says. After everything that's happened in the last three-hundred and sixty-five days, I feel like that quote could sum it all up pretty near perfectly – the whole year, and all of the years before it, I have only been having as much fun as I have been willing to admit. And now that I'm over in the most hyped youth destination in the fucking world, it's almost like I have to report back that I'm having the time of my life... it's no coincidence though, that I really, completely am having that time. The best time ever. And whether it's because I came to a place that was supposed to be brilliant, or because I found that place within myself, and then happened to move cities, it doesn't matter. Two-Thousand and Twelve was Happy.

Twenty-Thirteen?... let's go for 'spontaneous'. Sorry about the sappy, seriousness of this post for anyone wonderful enough to have made it this far. Thanks for reading, whoever you are, to be serious for a second, if you have ever taken the time out of your day to read anything that I've written and pushed out into the ether, it means more to me than I can put into words here. Thankyou.
And I promise I'll put more funnies in next time. Until then, dicks dicks dicks. Big fat willy. Asses.

Happy New Year everyone.
Peace, Taco.