The Conversation Is...

I think of myself as a (usually) good judge of character, but this is probably because I think everyone is a good person when I first meet them, until I find out that they are an asshole or a nutcase.

Whilst on a night-shift at the airport Coffee Club a fortnight or so ago, a young chap from Liverpool came in for a soy chai latte ("Harden the fuck up"). I immediately saw an opening for a bout of polite small talk, what with the fellow being from North-West England, like myself; being of a similar age, and him carrying an acoustic guitar around. I served him his fruity latte and began, "...So, are you from Liverpool then?"

"Yeah, originally. I live in Edinburgh now though. I just came out here for ten days to get away from all the shit back home. Where are you from then?"

"Well, I've lived in Blackpool for almost ten years."

"Blackpool's a fucking shithole."

"Um. Yeah, I guess. So what's it like back in Blighty now? Still buckled by recession, yeah?"

"No, mate. You see, man, the thing is, there is no recession. It's just the world government's plan to get us all back into concentration camps. History is repeating itself."

"Yeah... What?"

"Can't you see it, mate? How can the world be so fucking blind? So fucking blind all the fucking time. You know that 'Barrack Obama'? Who does he remind you of?"

"Um... um... No one in particular really?"

"Stalin? Mussolini? HITLER?!"

"Err..."

"Everyone loves him but no one realises that he's on his way to being the next Hitler. Everything about him just reeks of Nazi. He has all the same policies as Hitler, I'm tellin' ya."

(Wearily) "Yeah?"

"Do you know what 'Yes We Can' says if you play it backwards?"

"No."

"Do you know?"

"No. What does it say?"

At this point he stares directly into my eyes, and over-enunciating each word, he says,

"It says, 'I Love Satan'. Seriously. Seriously..."

"'Yes We Can' backwards is I Love Satan? But what the 'V' and..."

"Don't think about it, mate, just listen to it."

"Okay."

"But don't worry, mate. We can beat them. You and I, we're thinkers. We will fight them... with our thoughts... and with our hearts."

"Right."

"Just keep thinking, keep looking, and you'll be fine."

"Yeah, see you around, man."


I honestly, honestly, have absolutely no idea where people like that get their ideas. But I swear, every word of that conversation is true. Okay, there may be a few omissions, but everything above was said in a completely serious manner.

Only one word comes to mind,
...Ridiculous
...Absurd
...Ludicrous
...Preposterous
...Outrageous
...Audacious
...And just downright silly.

Schindler's Other List

It may appear that once again I'm taking the easy way out by fulfilling my urge to write a blog by simply sharing a list, but I assure you that I have thought long and hard about the subject of my upcoming post and this list seemed like the only option. I'm afraid you will either have to like it or lump it, it's the best I can come up with on this lazy Thursday morning.

Digression aside, I recently made a trip to California. In the past I have expressed my love for the state and its people with an outpouring of joy and admiration in the form of a blog, I assumed that method was getting old and weary so I felt no need to put fingers to keyboard just to express what eveyone already knows. On this trip however, in return for all the happiness and fun the people of LA and The Bay Area have given me in days long gone, I subconciously decided to infect every person I met with a mild case of swine flu*. "Mild" in some situations turned out to be worse than in others. Here are the dear people that I remember sharing my disease with, either directly or indirectly, one will never know (in no particular order):

Alex B.
Alex B's Dad
Alex Ryan
MJ
Adam
Colin
Mary
Sara
Heather
Danielle
Morgan
Joey
Mal
Michaela
Kyra

I can almost guarantee that this is not the comprehensive list that I had assembled in my mind last week, I shall elaborate on it at a later date I guess.



*The only way I have of knowing that it was actually swine flu is that when Alex B passed out on a visit to the doctor's surgery, he told her that it was most likely said plague. Actual results are still pending.

Sixty-Three Ways To Pass The Time

Over the course of the last month, I have found it a struggle to keep myself entertained without delving into rapidly-decreasing funds. Thus, I took it upon myself and Cam to pass the slow, jobless days by watching movie, upon movie, upon movie. From this, I have killed a good thirty minutes to an hour by typing up all of these films from memory, amongst other, more reliable, sources.
Here is the outcome:

Adaptation
Adulthood
Alpha Dog
American Beauty
American Gangster
American Psycho
The Bank Job
Being John Malkovich
Big Fish
Blair Witch
Bruno
Bully
Butterfly Effect
Casino
Chapter 27
Clerks
A Clockwork Orange
Corpse Bride
Coyote Ugly
The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
Deliverance
Detroit Rock City
Donnie Brasco
Ed Wood
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Funny Games
Garden State
Goodfellas
Hard Candy
The Hole
In Bruges
Jimmy & Judy
Kids
Lord Of The Flies
Love, Honour & Obey
The Machinist
The Mask
Millions
Mr. Deeds
No Country For Old Men
Paparazzi
Pinocchio
Ratatouille
Requiem For A Dream
Road To Guantanamo
Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist
Romeo + Juliet
Run Fatboy Run
Seven
Shaun Of The Dead
Son Of Rambow
Step Brothers
Sweeney Todd
Swingers
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Tart
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
The Truman Show
The Waterboy
What's Eating Gilbert Grape
Zack & Miri Make A Porno
Zoolander

Synecdoche, Shmineckducky

You may have, or probably have, already seen this glorious piece of cinematography. Either way, I could not help but share with those who have not seen, the most perfect scene, from the most almost-perfect movie.

The Peter Files

From time to time, one comes across a person who is truly extraordinary, and not in the positive sense. Perhaps a better phrase would be "damn odd", but I shall stick with Extraordinary for now. Whilst thumbing my way to Sydney, which was my first real milestone, I was offered a ride by a queer fellow in a 'Big Dig' truck, whom I may have mentioned in my previous video blog venture. Refraining from going into great detail about Peter, I will instead offer you (the next-best-thing to) a first-person insight into his personailty, or what I encountered of it. This is a list of bizarre citations which spouted from his flapping jaw (in italics), littered with my puzzled responses (in standard).


"I don't believe in money, you see. I believe in the Birth Rights System, where each child is given a plot of land to do with it as they wish. Money spawns greed, and disease, and pollution, and war. I write to world leaders regularly, asking them to abolish all the mints in the world and to start over with the Birth Rights System."
(Here, he pulls out an entire folder of letter to Bill Clinton, Queen Elizabeth II, George W. Bush and Jacques Chirac, among others. In the letters he explains why destroying all the money in the world and letting people live off the land is a good idea. He also promises to send all the global leaders into exile because of their "mismanagement".)

"Did you ever get any replies?"
"Chirac's secretary wrote back once."


"So who was Joan Of Arc?"
"Huh?"
"Joan Of Arc. Who was she?"
"Some French revolutionary or something."
"What did she do?"
"Rebelled against the French monarchy? I don't know."
"When was all this then?"
"Fifteen-hundreds maybe?"
"Did she die old or young?"
"I really don't know. Twenty?"
"How did she die?"
"I think she was burnt at the stake. Why do you ask?"
"I just heard her name once."


"Ten more minutes and I'm gonna call it the longest time I've ever driven through rain."
(Half an hour later)
"Yep, I think five more minutes and I'm gonna call it."
(The next morning, still raining.)
"Yeah, I reckon another half hour and I'm gonna call it."


(With my phone to my right ear.)
"Psst! Put it to your left ear, I'll tell you why after."
"Mobile phones used to give you tumours, then when the phone companies found out they put these reflector things in them so now 80% of the radiation shoots out the back of your phone instead of into your brain, so that goes into whoever is sat next to you, you know? Now I'll probably die of a brain tumour in twenty years and so will you. The radiation will stay in the cab of the truck so you should open the window."
(To himself:)"I should make a sign saying 'No Phones'..."
"How can I ask people nicely not to use their phones in here?"
"Um, 'Don't use your phone in here please?'"
"Yeah, that's good."


"So how do I get a girlfriend, Wayne? I really want a girlfriend."


"I'll show you around the world famous Ettamongah pub."
"What's it famous for?"
"It's famous for 'G'day mate'"
"Eh?"
"It's famous for 'G'day mate'. Look at these cartoons on the walls. See? It says 'mate' a lot."
"Oh..."


"I'm a full-time protester. And a full-time furniture-mover."


"I'm meeting my friend from Mildura in Brisbane and some Canadian girls he knows. He said they're having a party at six-ish I think."
"Am I invited? I might find a girlfriend!"


"This is Cavall Street. Tell your friends back home that you've been here and their jaws will drop."


"No-one really needs windscreen wipers anyway. That's why I don't use them."


"Gordon Ramsey is just a genuinely really bad person. I hate him, he's going to Hell. He's probably the worst person that ever existed. He's really nasty, isn't he?"


"Miranda Kerr is basically doing nothing for money. She's just selling her body because she's pretty. She's a slut. A slut, just like all models."

...And Now For Something Completely Different.

Spoken word!

(I'm not sure how this will work out, but internet access was scarce whilst hitch-hiking, so dodgy videos are the best I can offer.)


DAY ONE.




DAY TWO.




DAY THREE

Save Joana

Although this post and my last are more like strangers separated by the Pacific than siblings, I feel obliged to share with you this semi-short anecdote, as it proves that most people are genuinely / generally compassionate towards strangers (which could be why this post and my last, which are essentially irrelevant to one another, make consecutive appearances on the same blog). How does every story begin? That's right, not with "Once upon a time", but at the beginning (as a three-year-old yours truly one told a Punch & Judy 'performer'.)

It was a dark and stormy night (thank you, Bulwer-Lytton), or rather a dark and drizzly Friday afternoon. Lost for activities to pass the weekend, I found myself browsing through a free music magazine in the Heaven and Hell restaurant known as McDonald's. My eyes soon stumbled upon an ad for a band called Trial Kennedy, who were to be playing in Melbourne that Sabbath. Like the majority of you scanning through this, I had never heard of them. I thanked the FSM that Facebook hadn't yet pummelled MySpace into a pixelated oblivion, and used it to it's full potential. Impressed by their sounds, I gave PayPal my $13 to forward to them in exchange for a ticket.

Fast forward a few dozen hours to the night of the show. As is common practice in my sect's way of life these days, I took the decision to not eat any solids that Sunday and instead opted to dine on PassionPop™ and beer. Once inside the venue, I set upon enjoying the support acts and setting the world to rights with people I didn't know, and now never will. The reason for this being that on my way to the water closet, I was apprehended by a burly bouncer who decided that he'd had enough of my "pushing and shoving and walking into people". I protested that he had me mistaken for someone else, but my pleas for re-entry fell on big, beefy, deaf ears and he was adamant that the remainder of my evening be spent in bed.

Of course, having paid $13 to see Trial Kennedy, I wasn't going to acquiesce easily. So for the next hour I paced the streets of Melbourne like a 1990 Swayze, trying to figure out how to get what I wanted, which certainly wasn't to watch Demi Moore tonguing what was essentially Whoopi.

I returned to the Ding Dong Lounge and explained to the bouncer that all I wanted was a tshirt, not another drink. He assented to my request under the condition that I was escorted to the merch stand. Handing over a twenty and a ten, I shared my story of ill-timed ejection resulting in my missing of the headline band with the recipient. She happened to be more sympathetic than I could have ever hoped for, and took it upon herself to take my number and promised to assist me in getting to their show in a suburb the otherside of town the next day. She explained that it shouldn't be a problem as she was then singer's sister.

When the blurred sun made the effort to rise behind the moody, grey clouds the next morning, I wasn't expecting the text from Cath reiterating her promise to get me to the show that night. As the day sped from youth to veteran, we decided on an early meet-up so I could bond with some bottled self-esteem beforehand. She took me to her house where talks of trials and side effects ran rampant between us and Tim (from TK) and Shay. I tried to avoid the subject of the band, as I didn't want to come across as over-zealous, but a peppering sufficed.

Too soon came the time of the show (the support were to be missed), but Trial Kennedy on stage came at precisely the right moment. The exchange of drinks between Cath, Shay, Chris (Cath's other brother) were frequent, and cheerful banter poured out of our mouths.

The band finished. The bar closed. the lights came on. Exits opened. People left. Hands shook. Embraces happened. Acknowleding-nods were in surplus. A free album exchanged palms. Rides home were dished out. This may sound like any other night out that anyone can have, like a regular concatenation of events culminating in new friendships. Isn't that just called socialising? Maybe so. But to me this was an uncalled-for act of kindness. A promise that needn't have been kept. In all honesty, I was expecting to be let down; not because I didn't trust Cath, but because these situation arise every weekend. Pledges like "Yeah, man, I'll get you a job!" or "I'll get you on the guestlist next week", almost always come to nothing. This time I was lucky.

As a footnote I would like to add that the weekend following this, I was desperate for somewhere to stay as I was sick of wasting money on hostels, I resorted to almost sleeping at the station. However, I received a response to an ad on Gumtree that I had placed, feebly asking for a garden to pitch a tent. A 40-something woman called and invited me to sleep on her living room couch. This offer was extended to the next two nights and included lasagne and other morsels for me to devour. It just goes to show, all is not lost.