Gregory Cooper's Blog

A Post On Posters

2012-10-05T16:58:00.000+13:00

You'd think having spent three years at the University of Canterbury not doing a double degree in law and economics and doing a degree in business administration, with a good dollop of marketing and sociology, I'd have some of idea of how to sell a theatre show, but I don't.

I know you're meant to make up some posters and flyers. The previous AD of a theatre I worked at insisted all posters, "must be able to be read from a bus." I'm still not certain if he meant the poster must be able to be read from a moving bus, or if the poster itself was on a moving bus and must be able to be read by someone not on the bus, or if the poster should be able to be read by someone on the bus with the poster, but Melbourne has trams so it doesn't matter anyway.

Flyers though are crucial. I've had previous experience with flyers. Flyers are horrible. I dislike them intently. The only thing worse than giving a flyer is being given one. Nobody wants a flyer. They are little bits of paper laminated in lies. The flyer giver is pretending to like you, the flyer is riddled with cobbled corrupt quotes from fictitious publications about a completely different show to the one on the flyer, and the flyer recipient says they will definitely come to your show when they have no intention of attending. Sometimes the flyer recipient will reciprocate and perpetuate the lie cycle by giving you a flyer to their show, 'I Had A Nervous Breakdown But I'm Feeling Better About It Now I Can Sing And Smoke And Argue with My Mother And Eleven Other Family Members: **** The Scottish Age Herald Sun Tribune Time Out Someone's Blog Fringe Review', and then you have to gush a fountain of lies about how you'll definitely come along and tell all your friends and tweet and post and vote for them in the online audience Best of the Fringe Award.

I blew all my advertising budget, or what happened to be in my bank account at the time, on 50 posters and 500 flyers for Heroic Faun No. One. 50 posters isn't a lot, but I'm terrified of them after the traumatic experience of watching nine of my A3 posters get wiped out by one giant AFUCKOFF U2 Zooropa poster in Christchurch, minutes after I'd stuck them up with sticky tape, two toilet rolls, one pipe cleaner and a pair of snips. The entire poster run for my show, 'Whoops I've Lost My Pukeko In A Moist Place **** The Christchurch Bugler', was eviscerated by this monstrosity.


BoNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

New Zooland. Hilarious. And Bono's got a fag in his mouth, which is hardly setting a good example for the youth is it. The Edge actually looks like he's celebrating the fact he ruined my season and Adam looks like he's been human centepeded onto the edge of The Edge. The only one who seems the slightest bit remorseful is Larry, and he's always been my favourite B52U2er. Thank you Larry.

I've given five of my posters to the Fringe and they've put them up somewhere. I'm using another 15 of them during the season for Sandro to sketch a picture of a lucky audience member on the back. A few have been given away and the cat chewed up one, so that leaves about 20. Now, in real time, I shall go and conquer my U2 fear, by putting up 8% of my poster run on a bollard on the corner of Stanley Street and Smith Street, and take photos to prove it...talk amongst yourselves, I may be gone for some time.

I'm back. It all went off without a hitch. Here I am buying the naughty tools of my trade at Woolworths. I'm wearing my official 'The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe' cap to hide my identity, and for its symbolic symbolism. I'm a bit blotchy in the face due to nervousness and being allergic to everything.


Elmer's School Glue was on special at $2.49

Here is a photo of the bollard before my heroic assault.

It was a tough choice as to the posters I would have to envelop, but after seconds of deep contemplation I decided Turbonegro and Spiritualized could cope with the marketing hit. I've hyperlinked to their shows as a small token of my remorse, and I think Spiritualized may have already sold out. Now it was time to break out the Elmers and get marketing!

Generations of school children have grown up with this #1 brand of school glue. Elmer’s washable no-run school glue is easy to use and stays where you put it. It is safe, non-toxic and washable, so accidental messes mean easy clean-up!

You may notice I'm wearing sunglasses now as well as my cap. That's because I'm very famous in Melbourne and didn't want anyone to see me pasting up my own posters. A police car drove past slowly...


Bad Greg, bad Greg, whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do with your Elmer's Glue?

...but I just kept on gluing. Soon, the first posters were in place.

I kept expecting Bono to turn up with a big poster, but he must have been too busy evading tax. I pressed on pressing on posters and before you could say, "Over me and over you, stuck together with God's glue, it's going to get stickier too', I was done!

Great stuff!

And finally, here's the completed bollard in action, busy generating thousands of dollars worth of ticket sales.

Ooooh, I must get tickets to that!

Wow. I've overcome a phobia that's crippled me emotionally and professionally for 20 years, and I've still got 16 posters and 200 flyers left. What a day! Tickets must be flying out of the internet by now, so go here quick and don't miss out.

One Man. One Goal. One Fringe Season.

2012-09-27T15:23:00.001+12:00

Regular readers of this sporadic blog might know that from time to time I like to do a bit of acting. I'm not a trained actor per se, in that I didn't attend such esteemed institutions as RADA, LAMBA, LADA or BADABING, however that hasn't stopped me from tackling such meaty roles as, 'The Big Bad Wolf', 'Gerry Brownlee', 'All three of the three bears in Goldilocks & The Three Bears at once', and 'Godzilla'. Godzilla was particularly tricky as I couldn't see out of his big green foamy head and had to negotiate my way by lifting my green flippers high while feeling for set/actors/children with my green rubber gloves. I only fell over once, but that was due more to a two hour session at the Dux before the final show.

Regular readers will also know that I've done a show called 'Heroic Faun No. One' a couple of times. It's a one-man show about my time as a featured extra on the Disney film, 'The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe.' One-man shows are done for two reasons. The first is so an established and famous actor can show off without fear of being upstaged by some young go-getter just out of LABIA. Jean-Luc Picard handled 43 parts in his one-man adaptation of 'A Christmas Carol', and the baddie from Beverly Hills Cop has done heaps of one-man shows, probably because everyone is too scared to share the stage with him.

"Go on...say your line punk."

A friend of mine, who was a centaur in 'The Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe', waited at stage door to get this man's autograph after his one-man version of 'The Metamorphosis', and he metamorphosised my friend into a blubbering wreck when he couldn't get the cap off his Sharpie fast enough. My friend is 6' 2" and bald, and this Beverly Hills baddie crushed him like the dung beetle he'd just been pretending to be. Scary stuff.

The second reason one-man shows are done is because the actor is not well known, and has no money to pay for things like other actors, set, props, costumes, producers, publicists, designers and a director, but still craves the opportunity to wake up in the middle of the night soaking in stress induced sweat, wondering if they will get 30% for the season to make enough to cover the venue and projector hire, indemnity insurance, festival registration fee, 500 flyers, 50 posters, bottle of spirit gum, crepe hair, wig, green and red fabric and back up rubber sword.

Thankfully I have managed to surround myself with a small group of tremendously talented and generous people who seem happy to give up their time and expertise to help me run around on stage in green tights for 55 minutes playing 12 different people, none of whom are Godzilla. If you happen to be in Melbourne anytime from this Friday until October 13th, you might want to come along by going here first.

If you're not you can still like the Heroic Faun Facebook Page.

I will do my best to post regular updates on how the season is progressing, unless I have to flee the country to Tasmania.

Finally, if like me you like cats, then watch this. Thanks to Gareth for putting it on his FB page

Wham Bam Thank You George Michael

2012-08-13T16:11:00.001+12:00

I was still very sleepy while watching the London Olympics Closing Ceremony this morning, but here's a review of the bits I can remember. I turned on the tele a few minutes after it started and saw a woman singing who I thought was Adele, but it wasn't. Then the guy from Auf Wiedersehen Pet popped out of something pretending to be Winston Churchill, while Stomp stomped and banged rubbish bins. It was only then that I noticed that the stage was in the shape of the Union Jack and everything was covered in big newspapers before the kettle whistled, so I missed most of Madness. They were singing 'Our House'. I wished they were doing 'Baggy Trousers', because I quite like that song, but everybody in the Olympics wore incredibly tight trousers so it probably wasn't appropriate. Then the Pet Shop boys came on dressed as black cones and Neil Tennant sang 'West End Girls' while Andrew Ridgely played the keyboard because George Michael didn't want anything to do with him. Actually before that there were some young boys on the back of a truck who I think were a Harry Potter themed boy-band called Wand Erection, although I was waiting for my toast to pop and not concentrating so they may have been the Spice Girls.

Then the Olympics DJ played a bit of a Beatles song because Paul McCartney was disqualified from singing it after fluffing the start to 'Hey Jude' at the Opening Ceremony. Ray Davies sang 'Waterloo Sunset' while everybody else was dressed as ABBA and dancing to 'Waterloo'. Adele sang again but it wasn't Adele. I smeared some of Dick Smith's Magnificent Australian Grown Honey, a "specially prepared premium blend by Dick Smith", on my toast and it was indeed magnificent. I thought Dick Smith only made do-it-yourself crystal sets and flew around the world in his helicopter, but trust me, his honey is to die for.

All the athletes came in with their iPhones and iPads as the official Olympic Worldwide partner Samsung sang the blues. Elbow sang two lovely songs while Eddie McGuire and some woman spouted incessant crap all over them. I really don't like Eddie McGuire. I've never met him but I know if I did I wouldn't take to him at all. He's like a cross between Paul Henry, Mike Hosking and a pooh, and I don't like any of them. For high performance athletes they were all moving very slowly, so the Olympics DJ had to play all the songs we'd already heard and ruined the magic by revealing lots of Milli Vanilli lipsynching had been going on behind our backs.

That's right, a brass beefeater band banged out Blur's 'Parklife' at some point, but Blur were too busy banging out 'Parklife' in Hyde Park to be there. This remined me a lot of hearing Andrew Causer play 'Funky Town' on a clarinet during fourth form music class. Some songs should never be played on wind instruments. 'Parklife' is one of them.

I'd heard a rumour that Kate Bush was going to sing, but alas, it turned out to be just that. The Olympics DJ did play 'Running Up That Hill' and for a second I was terrified the whiny nasal lead singer of Placebo was going to sing it, but thankfully he didn't. Lots of people built a tower out of boxes. Eddie McGuire said each box represented an Olympic event but I didn't believe him. He also kept blethering on about how, 'just one year ago London was on fire from race riots and the race riots were setting London on fire and the Olympics have solved the race riots and put the fire out because there were race riots a year ago and isn't it amazing how just one year later there's no race riots and everyone who could afford the thousand pound ticket to be here was having a fabulous time, no matter what race they were and nobody was rioting and there were no fires, except the Olympic flame, but that's meant to be there and...oooh look, there's an Australian athlete texting.'

Yoko remastered 'Imagine' and let us see some footage of John she'd kept in her closet for years as lots of people made John's face. Then George Michael turned up. Now, I love George Michael. I've got Wham's greatest hits on vinyl and follow him on Twitter and everything. I've even blogged about him. He nearly died in Austria so full credit to him for putting in the hard yards and making a good fist of 'Freedom '90'. The Olympics Audiovisual monitor even projected the word 'FREEDOM' onto the audience so everyone could sing along. I think because George hadn't been on stage for a while the occasion got the better of him and instead of going for a lie down he let rip with his new single 'White Light'. George wrote and sang 'Careless Whisper', one of the best songs ever with one of the best lyrics ever, 'guilty feet have got no rhythm'. Unfortunately 'White Light' is no 'Careless Whisper', and half way through George was obviously feeling guilty and started dancing unrhythmically. Like this.

Then he got all 'Walk Like An Egyptian' on it.

Then I couldn't take anymore and went to the loo.

When I came out there was a young man singing an old song on a Vespa. I was scared Sting might appear 'cos he was in Quadrophenia, but he was too busy making sure his orchestra was bigger than George's. Then the Olympics DJ played some David Bowie, but Bowie was a no-goey, so they got Kate Moss in as a last minute replacement. Kate appears in George's 'White Light' video, but after seeing George's dance moves wisely left him to his own devices. Annie Lennox or Bjork sang a song on a pirate ship and then Prince Harry sang 'Wish You Were Here' while George Michael tried to slip unnoticed out of the stadium on a tight-rope.

By now I was losing interest and stroking the cat. Russell Brand did something odd while some odd old guy pretended to play a Gemini CD Mixer in a big octopus. A woman sang, "It's not about the money money money", while being driven round and round in a Rolls Royce, and The Spice Girls sang, "La La La La La La La La La, La La La La La La La, La La La La La La La La La, La La La La La La La", on the top of some Priscillaed up black cabs. The guy with the really nasal voice from Placebo finally appeared and did a passable Liam Gallagher impersonation, before Eric Idle got everyone singing 'Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life'. This was so far the musical highlight of the evening, although it was quickly topped by the genius idea of projecting Freddie Mercury having an 80's Wembley sing-star battle with the crowd. This bit was genuinely moving, and proved beyond doubt that even though he's been dead for 20 years, nobody can work a stadium like Farrokh Bulsara. They even slipped in the 'fuck you' at the end I think. Here's the full video if you're interested.

Great stuff! On the home stretch now. I think I've forgotten Muse but who cares. Brian May had gone very Grey and wore a jacket with badgers and corgis on it. There were some speeches, Boris waved a flag, some guy who looked like a vampire said 'well done', the Brazilians danced and swept and then a Robbie-less Take That sang the Olympic flame into submission. The Real Who sang 'My Generation' and 'Baba O'Riley', which was great. I wished they'd done this one though. What a tune.

And then, with a billion quids worth of fireworks it was all over. Well done London. Well done Dick Smith. Well done everyone.

I Flu Jetstar

2012-08-03T15:37:00.002+12:00

My body is ~~a wonderland~~ the harborer of a governmentally approved chronic illness, so I'm entitled to a complimentary flu vaccination every year. I always feel a little smug when I go to get my steroids to inhale, snort and smear, and end up getting injected with a nearly dead pathogen for free. It's not as good as being a member of the Koru Club, but pretty close. The doctor always tells me to wait for 15 minutes just in case I turn into a fly, however I usually loiter longer to parade my free wee white plaster on my shoulder to those poor unfortunates who aren't blessed with a chronic illness.

My free flu jab has kept me flu free for as long as I can remember. Until this year. This year I may as well have been injected with the tears of a honeybee for all the good it did. I didn't help myself by flying Jetstar return to Sydney either. Jetstar didn't help me, or the honeybee, by cancelling the flight and rescheduling me onto an international flight...to Sydney...from Melbourne, without telling me that I'd have to go through customs and would require a passport. To go from Melbourne. To Sydney. The orange Jetstar lady in the orange Jetstar uniform laughed at my New Zealand drivers license, and in desperation I began yanking out any Australian card I had in my wallet; my Commonwealth Bank Debit Card, my Myki, my Yarra Libraries Your Library Membership card, my Woolworths Everyday Rewards card, my Ikea Family card entitling me to free coffee and meatballs without needing to make a purchase, and finally my Medicare card. The orange lady stopped cackling, snatched my Medicare card, and scuttled off for what seemed like an eternity. A Jetstar eternity equals seven human eternities so it was a really long eternity. She returned and said, "Yeah, well, ya might make it thru love, I dunno really, give it a crack, it works for kids sometimes." The man at passport control looked very dubious about the whole sordid affair. His hand hovered over his stamp while I pretended to be a seven year old boy and wet myself. "Fair enough," he finally said, and stamped me through. I celebrated by doing a Jetstar jump when I got to Sydney in my Australian bikini.

What a palava. New Zealand invented the pavlova. I couldn't even buy any duty free. The plane was like one of those scenes near the end of a contagion film like Contagion, where everyone is miserable and coughing and wishing they were dead and not flying Jetstar. The coughs of a million budget airline passengers recirculated through the fetid air into my chronically ill lungs, and within days my free vaccination waved a white blood cell and gave up the fight.

My big mistake was getting the jab in New Zealand. This protected me from the NZ flu, but in hindsight didn't stand a chance against the infinitely more confident, aggressive and larakinish Australian strain. The NZ flu is an understated, self-deprecatory one that has a good crack at you, but doesn't want to cause too much puss. The Aussie strain screams 'Oi, Oi Oi!', smashes you in the head, drinks all your fluids and shits itself in your lungs. Its speed and tenacity were terrifying. I was in bed for a day and a half and spent the rest of the week trying to evacuate snot and phlegm on the minute every minute. I've been coughing like a Jetstar passenger for weeks, although I can now scull a whole bottle of Robitussen while suppositing Neurofen Zavance, so it wasn't a complete waste of time.

It also gave me a good excuse to watch some Olympics. None of my opening ceremony predictions were correct, however I was very pleased to see some Chinese, Korean and Indonesian women had a good crack at BADminton before they all got kicked out. It's been interesting living in a different country while the games are on to monitor the mood of the populous as their athletes get second. This picture sums up the difference between here and the homeland rather well.

Created by clever Jonathan Louis Fox.

I'm just hoping New Zealand wins a second gold before Australia does to put us ahead on the medals table. It will probably mean they shut their borders and deport us all, but it'll be worth it.

Rings Can Only Get Better

2012-07-17T17:39:00.000+12:00

The Five Rings of the Apocalypse are almost upon us and London is in a frenzy of painting rings on ring roads and installing missiles to shoot down anyone eating fries that haven't passed through the happy anus of Ronald McDonald. The ring road rings designate Olympic Lanes, allowing athletes to get to their places of running, tossing and leaping faster by forcing locals to drive their cars on two wheels like the Dukes of Hazzard. On the footpath.

Picture nicked from @theJeremyVine

I love the Olympics. Once when I was young and the Earth was 1984, I drew a beautiful poster for the Los Angeles Olympics instead of a poster about Jesus. It was during Scripture Class at Northcote Primary School, and the religious man who turned up once a week to fill us with red wine and the body of Christ thought it was quite good, although he was very old and may have thought my picture of the guy who flew into the opening ceremony on a jet pack was actually Jesus.


Not Jesus.

Jesus.

A guy on a Jet Pack! London will have a tough time topping that. Danny Boyle's directing it so hopefully it will be lots of Scottish people pretending to inject heroin, and lots of British people pretending to die of a mysterious virus, and lots of Indians pretending to become millionaires, and lots of Americans pretending to cut their own arms off, and then they all work together to re-ignite a giant dying sun disguised as the Olympic flame. Then Gary Barlow shoots the tax money he's avoided paying out of a huge cannon, and the Spice Girls shoot Posh Spice out of a cannon, and Daniel Craig catches her unless a gust of wind blows her away. Finally Underworld play their hit 'Born Slippy', cunningly changed to 'Born Zippy', and Zippy from Rainbow flies in on a Jet Pack and joins Sir Paul McCartney in a rousing sing-a-long of Mull of Kintyre, with every audience member playing complementary McDonalds bagpipes for the final chorus. I can't wait.

I'd love to compete in the Olympics, but unfortunately I'm rubbish at all the things you need to be really good at to compete in the Olympics. This is obviously discriminatory and I'm surprised nothing has been done about it. It's all running and rowing and cycling and swimming and jumping and throwing and lifting and shooting and beach volleyball. The only remotely athletic things I've ever done are punching myself in the face with a hand-weight during a boxing class, and nearly shitting myself during a yoga class.

So, I have made a list of five new events I think I'd be quite good at that should be included in the 2016 Olympics in...somewhere

Synchronised Sinking. I'm an OK swimmer, a terrible diver but I'm great at sinking. After bombing off a high board, both competitors must sink in perfect unison, ideally hitting the bottom at exactly the same time. Extra points for a big splash and if your togs fall off on impact.

Horse Whispering. I've ridden a horse once in my life and that is enough. I am very good at flapping my lips like a horse and dressing up like one though. This event involves two people dressed as a pantomime horse. Real Equestrian athletes are blindfolded and competitors must try to fool them into thinking they are a real horse by making horse noises and eating sugarcubes. The most realistic horse wins gold and the chance to compete in the Dressage.

Gymnastics: The Rommel Horse. Scheduled after the previous event to put the rear half of the horse through their paces. Two competitors dressed as an equine version of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel must perform an interpretative dance encapsulating his achievements in the North African campaign, while male gymnasts perform circles, scissors and kehrswings on their back.

BADminton. The winners of this event are the most inept at playing badminton. I'm guaranteed a medal.

100m Walk. I'm good at walking but I'm buggered if I'm going to do it for 50 km.

Other possibles include the MC Hammer Throw, where competitors hurl a copy of 'Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em' at MC Hammer until someone hurts him, and the Pole Vault, where competitors must use a very stiff Polish person to propel themselves high into the air.

I hope you all enjoy the Olympics as much as I will. It sounds like the competitors will be having a fantastic time as well, with unlimited free McDonalds, and 100,000 free flavoured condoms that taste exactly like a Quarter Pounder with extra cheese.

50 Shades of Chicken

2012-07-10T14:16:00.003+12:00

I've blogged about KFC before and now it's happening again. A lot has changed since my last KFC inspired post in July 2009. Michael Jackson died, TomKat divorced and a bunch of people discovered a particle of God hiding inside a giant ring underneath Switzerland. I tried to feel clever by watching the live announcement of this discovery but ended up feeling annoyed by the lackluster state of their PowerPoint slides.

Some pedantic font-Nazis pooh poohed the physicists for using the Collingwood of fonts Comic Sans, but people who get foamy and fisty about a typeface need to take a good hard look at themselves in a glasshouse with a black kettle. The font isn't the issue, it's the text. The physicist reads the text aloud so it doesn't need to be in the slide. The slide should have an exciting image to support what is being read. I'll whip something up now.

But back to the chicken. Today I came across this article detailing the details of KFC's intention to introduce self-service kiosks to their house of chicken emporiums. Here's a picture of some lucky French people ordering their deux poulets pièce et paquet trimestre puces using nothing but pokey digits and a greasy screen.

I'm no French speaker but those words above their heads look suspiciously like speed and attitude and ici. By using Google Translate I can tell you they translate to speed and attitude and here. Having ordered a metric-tonne of KFC in my lifetime, I can honestly say the last thing I want when ordering my guilt-gobble is attitude, and the first thing I want is speed. Here. Ordering KFC is like buying condoms, the less human interaction the better. They also taste quite similar...apparently. The French have had these Automatic Poulet Machines (APM) for years, lucky bâtards. I've studied this picture for a while and the slots don't look big enough for a breast or thigh, possibly a wing might make it through, chips should be fine although they'd have to come out all nicely lined up.

Restaurant Brands CEO Russell Creedy is a big fan. 'Yes indeedy', said Russell Creedy, 'there's a real needy for speedy feedy for the greedy and the weedy...oooh, there's Shahid Afridi!"

Mr Creedy also explains how the APM enhances customer's in-store experience by, "allowing people to spend more time considering what food items they wanted to buy." I'm sorry Mr Creedy, but surely this defeats the purpose of the speedy? I know what I want. I want a two piece quarter pack if I want to loathe myself for an afternoon, or a three piece quarter pack if I want to hate myself for a day. What I don't want is some arse standing ahead of me pondering the merits of a Giant Feast versus a Super Variety Bucket.

Mr Creedy goes on to say, "They can browse instead of being at a counter face-to-face with somebody who's looking at them saying, 'What would you like?'" I know where you're coming from there Mr Creedy. I fucking hate having to look at someone who's looking at me and rudely asking what I would like. Who do they think they are? Don't look at me. Don't look at me! Don't talk to me! I would like a two piece quarter pack please. DON'T LOOK AT ME! Do you sell condoms?

KFC have spent $2.7 billion dollars with Itchy & Saatchi to come up with the name 'Project Fusion' for this little escapade. Nuclear fusion is the process by which two or more atomic nuclei join together to form a single heavier nucleus, Project Fusion is the process by which you get your fried chicken faster. Auckland's North Shore will be the first lucky suburb to get this incredible technology and then it will be rolled out to other stores once they figure out how to fuse the kiosks with four wheels. Heaven knows when they will reach Australia. Still, in Australia KFC give you those dinky wee moist wipey finger sanitary napkins that are but a distant memory back in NZ. So there.

Exciting times. God particles. Self service chicken dispensers. Fifty shades of grey. What will they come up with next?

Make Sure You're Connected

2012-06-02T22:38:00.001+12:00

There comes a point in crime shows made up of acronyms, place names and 80's rappers where the lead investigator looks at a picture of the crime scene, a picture of the victim, a mug on their desk commemorating the 1937 Hindenburg disaster and a poodle brought in for questioning in relation to a suspicious fire at a grouting factory, and finally make the connections necessary to solve the crime.

'Of course. The victim didn't die of lead poisoning, all those pencils shoved up his nose were a clue he left us in the seconds before he died. His mouth in the shape of a 'NO' and his body in the shape of an 'A' are telling us to remove the A from the lead giving Led, as in Zeppelin. Zeppelin's used hydrogen, a colourless highly flammable gas contained in farts. Unbeknownst to the victim, the murderer had been flooding his home with farts for years and grouting up all his windows. When the murderer realised hydrogen wasn't poisonous he flew into a rage and chewed through a cable. Later that night when the victim switched on his lava lamp it blew his house up. Arrest that poodle.'

I'm temping again at the moment so have a lot of time on my hands to make connections. My hands are dripping with time and my brain with connections in between taking orders for Semi Sculpting Freeze and Shine High Lift Self Styling Peroxide Paste. The connections I've made are terrifying. By continuing to read this you may be putting your own life and ten of your Facebook friends at risk, so I'd advise to stop reading now and go gander at a safe site like this.

Still with me? OK, let's begin.

It is common knowledge that every week a million people move from New Zealand to Australia. This means in a few years there will be nobody left in New Zealand. We all know it's happening and most pundits argue it's due to the increasing Trans-Tasman income gap, warmer weather and the prospect of a reality show about Sally and Jamie Ridge. What nobody is asking is why these things are being allowed to happen. The weather issue is tricky to remedy, but surely it's not that hard to pay people more and take all the funding for 'A Ridge To Nowhere' and make something more entertaining like 'Celebrity Target', where ex-Shortland Street stars sneak into carpet cleaners homes to sniff their undies. The scary truth is these calamities are part of a coordinated attack designed to drive the entire New Zealand population across the ditch as quickly as possible. It is breathtaking in its scope and effectiveness and funded by three immensely powerful people with one hand in their pocket and the other up John Key's bum.

The first and most powerful of the triumvirate is this man.

I'm the king of ~~the world~~ New Zealand!

This man is called James Cameron. He has kept a very low profile and many of you are probably not even aware he exists. Not only is he a deep sea diver and film maker, he is also Canadian. His most recent film was about a giant ship that hit a giant tree and sunk to the bottom of a giant ocean into a land of blue people who live in mushrooms and battle a wizard and his cat. It was called Avatitanicar and made more money than the world had available resulting in the Global Financial Crisis. JC is buying up New Zealand land at an astonishing rate and based on some quick conspiracy extrapolation, will own half of New Zealand by my next birthday.

The second member is this man.

I'm the king of ~~the world~~ Wellington!

His name is Peter Jackson and he is not a deep sea diver, but is a film maker and possibly Canadian. He currently owns all of Wellington and is good friends with John Key and JC. What is most disturbing is that right behind PJ in this photo you can clearly see a gold Terminator waiting to kill any New Zealand actor asking for minimum terms and conditions. Who invented the Terminator? James Cameron did! The connections begin.

The third and most terrifying of the triumvirate is...

I'm the Queen of ~~the world~~ Wanaka!

Shania Twain. She is not a deep sea diver or a film maker but is definitely Canadian. She currently owns 24, 731 hectares of Wanaka paid for by idiots who loved 'Man! I Feel Like A Woman'.

So, we have a puppet Prime Minister being manipulated by at least two Canadians into implementing policies to free up land for them to build giant fortress like lairs filled with mysterious mists. The yellow peril dairy farm buy-up is a red herring planted by fat cats. We have been misled and obfuscated. The final question to ask is...

Why?

The answer came to me while I was keying an order for Moisture Boosting Baby Detangler, and it was so shocking I think I dispatched three 300ml bottles instead of two. JC, PJ and ST are planning to annihilate the human race. Not content with make believe, they intend to make the mother of all ~~snuff~~ end-of-the-world films and Shania will sing as the planet burns. PJ's Weta supercomputer may have already unleashed JC's diabolical Skynet system to render mankind out of existence. Soon they will launch an army of unstoppable James Cameron patented gold O-800 Terminators, or Oscars, armed with Red Digital Cameras to mop up the rest of humanity. JC and PJ will edit the footage in their nuclear bunker editing suites deep under the only place in the world safe from residuals and residual fallout.

I realise this all sounds farfetched but I'm temping so cut me some slack. I'm only meant to be there for two more weeks so it won't last. Next week I shall attempt to make the connection between the moon landing, the Loch Ness Monster and Seal...only if one of James Cameron's Oscars doesn't get me first.

Prince and the Pauper

2012-04-17T19:41:00.001+12:00

I'm going to see Prince. I doubt he'll see me but I'll see him looking like a spangly speck through my specs at the opposite end of Rod Laver arena on May 30th. It nearly didn't happen. Tickets to this major event went on sale at 9am yesterday and Ticketek confirmed this by telling me tickets were being sold to a major event while refusing to let me buy tickets to their major event every 20 seconds. At 9:20am Ticketek let me in very slowly, and I bounded in at dial-up speed to find the only tickets left were in the Purple Circle and cost $450 each. Admittedly that included a ride on his purple motorbike and a free copy of The Watchtower, but I just couldn't bring myself to love Prince that much. My love for Prince is closer to the colour of Silver Reserve, and those tickets had long gone...or so I thought. Because just as I was about to give up partying like it's 1999 for $99 + booking fee, Prince's diary suddenly freed up and he announced another gig the next night. I wonder who has the audacity to cancel on Prince at such late notice. Maybe he was meant to go door knocking and somebody lost the squiggle badge? Either way it was a miracle for me, and I leapt back into the Ticketek fray naively believing two silver seats would soon be mine. But no, too slow. Much too slow. It was Purple Zone or Purple Reserve Floor or nothing. No Prince for Greg.

I abandoned my computer and cheered myself up by making a cup of Dilmah with lactose and gluten free Almond milk and roughaged it down with some wheat and gluten free muesli and lactose and gluten free Almond milk. Then I stroked the cat and washed my hands afterwards just in case I stroked myself. Feeling much better about everything I returned to my computer and saw I wasn't the only one having to resort to gluten free gluttony and pussy stroking to get over the disappointment of missing out on The Squiggles. I hadn't been that sad since Robyn pulled out of Stereosonic and The Feelers pulled out of a parking space without getting crushed by a double decker bus or ten ton truck.

And then it happened. It was truly miraculous. Not quite as truly miraculous as Prince knocking on my door wanting to talk about Jesus and show me his purple circle, but pretty damn close. For some unfathomable reason I returned to pick the Ticketek scab and there it was, Prince had found himself at a loose end on Wednesday May 30th and booked another gig. I raced through the screens and before I could say in France a skinny man died of a big disease with a little name, I was the proud owner of two seats in Area UPP, Section S32-A, Row OO...Price Category: Silver Reserve! They could be the shittiest seats in a 14,820 capacity arena. How cool is that?

And now while you're doing things like stroking your cat while watching Seal on The Voice on May 30th, I'll be squinting at Prince from a distance and jiggling to hits like Little Red Corvette, Raspberry Beret, and the one about how difficult it is to put the top on a bottle of cream. Jealous much?


Prince's latest 12"

Painting in the Streets

2012-04-10T17:20:00.001+12:00

One of the great things about living in Melbourne is being surrounded by amazing street art. A few weeks ago I went on a street art tour operated by the appropriately named Melbourne Street Art Tours, and some of the stuff we saw was pretty awe-inspiring...none more so than this.

It was created over a couple of days by a group of French graffiti artists called Da Mental Vaporz. It's very big and very awesome and gets even better close-up.

I especially love this section featuring two moles tumbling from the dinosaur's turf hamstring.

What I don't love is dealing with Google's horrid system for loading pictures onto my blog, so let's see if embedding a video of the graffosaurs creation will be easier. It's not too long, well worth a watch and has a bit of tilt-shift technique, where by tilting your shifter you magically make things look all miniature and model railway like. It's very bloody clever and if you haven't seen any before go here and have a fresh pair of undies handy. Actually no, don't do that, click on the video below first and then go there.

DMV Melbourne Australia from Matt Harding on Vimeo.

OK, hopefully Google will let me load one more picture to finish. This delightful hippo is lurking down an alleyway off Gertrude Street in Fitzroy. I have named her Gertrude.

Turds and Music

2012-03-30T16:10:00.000+13:00

I'm in the middle of trying to write a musical. I'm not writing the music bit of the musical, just the 'al' bit, which in the musical world is called 'the book'. I'm writing all the stuff people say between the songs and some of the words of the songs, and then someone else who has trained in musical theatre in New York and can actually read music is writing the music. My co-writer is more than happy to listen to my musical suggestions, although so far my only contribution has been to suggest a melody that later turned out to be 'The Gambler' by Kenny Rogers. I blame my parents. They loved a bit of Kenny Rogers and thrashed the phonograph with him, John Denver, Nana Mouskouri, James Last, and Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass all through my formative years, so it's no surprise Kenny's been incubating inside me like a silver beardy alien just waiting to burst out and embarrass me in front of my collaborator.

I used to love a good musical. Some of the first shows I was involved in were musicals put on by the St Joseph's Light Operatic Society. I'm not sure who St Joseph was but he obviously loved his light opera. Here's a picture of him in The Sound of Music.

The resemblance to Julie Andrews is uncanny, although he could have shaved. Here he is with a pipe wrench in West Side Story.

Bit of a dodgy prop but you work with what you've got. Finally here he is in the role he's best known for, Joseph, with his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat was the first musical that started to really get on my tits. I think Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote it as a high school musical before High School Musical and boy did he nail it. There's only so many years a young man can be forced to sing, 'I closed my eyes, drew back the curtain, AH UH AHHH, to see for certain....AH AHHHHHH, what I thought I knew', before his thoughts turn to self harm and Silver Dollar Vodka brewed in Kaiapoi. And the line makes no sense. So, this young man thinks Andrew Lloyd Webber is outside his window furiously masturbating, but to make sure of it he draws back his curtains to have a look...with his eyes closed. You can't blame him, but he still won't see for certain what he thought he knew. Not content with inflicting horror on high school students the globe over, ALW decided to prolong the agony by letting rip with this little gem in 2007.

Holy Hannah. It was called 'Any Dream Will Do' and kept viewers gripped for 9 weeks to see which boy Andrew would choose to handle his big part. ALW was looking for a young man, "who's a bit of a Justin Timberlake, tiny touch of the Michael Jacksons and a bit of the Jude Laws", and in the only disturbing episode I saw was sweating like a sea bass on heat as young men descended into his ~~dungeon~~ studio in nothing but loincloths for a bit of one on one mentoring.


Andrew Lloyd Webber waiting for his next Joseph

But before Joseph I was really into musicals. I sang 'Dites-Moi' in South Pacific and 'This Was A Real Nice Clambake' in Carousel, even though I didn't and still don't have any idea what a clambake is. I was the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz in Form One, and the lead in some bizarre Form Two show called Hunter's Gold that was set in Central Otago and ripped off all the songs from Paint Your Wagon. I may have been the first and last person to ever sing 'Wand'rin Star' in the register of a choir boy. I was Oliver on alternate nights in Oliver! for The North Canterbury Musical Society, Bugsy Malone in Bugsy Malone, and the retarded boy who got killed at the end of the first half in The Doctor and The Devils, which wasn't a musical but probably should have been.

I went and saw Cats! in Sydney with my mother when I was about 13 and loved it. I even wrote a puff piece gushing about it for the school rag. I saw Le Mis and loved it as well. All the musicals I'd been in I loved. And then we started singing Every bloody Dream Will bloody Do every bloody year and I decided musicals were a bit shit. It didn't help I went and saw some touring production of Chess and got sick as a dog half-way through while the Arbiter forgot his lines. Even just watching this makes me sweat and shake and go all foetal. By the time an international musical makes it to New Zealand all the good people have long since scarpered, and we end up witnessing a bunch of bored understudies dance around Ray Woolf. I finally saw Phantom, thankfully with free tickets, and the best part was the dry ice.

The final nail in my musical coffin came while I was living in London. My parents were coming to visit and wanted to see a musical. They'd seen all the usual West End suspects, so I booked three tickets to see a show that had been getting rave reviews called Passion, by Stephen Sondheim. It had Tonys coming out of its arse and Sondheim had written the lyrics for West Side Story which has lots of finger clicking in it, so it was bound to be good. The curtain went up and my parents and I were greeted with two people shagging and singing a song that sounded nothing like 'Something's Coming'. It was all highly uncomfortable and I couldn't make any sense of it and there was no finger clicking. My parents bravely stuck with it to the very end and we made a pact never to speak of it again. I'm sure it will cost me some of my inheritance.

And now I'm helping write a musical of my own. I can't tell you what it's about, but it's going to have lots of dry ice and finger clicking.

What did I do last Summer?

2012-03-20T22:26:00.000+13:00

Many years ago I was walking past a strip of bars in Christchurch known collectively as The Strip. Every time I went back to Christchurch the names of these bars had changed. Celsius had become Fahrenheit, Liquidity, Solidity and Coyotes, Coyotes Bar and Restaurant. The one constant was their horribleness. They were horrible places filled with horrible men trying to put their horrible penises into horribly drunk young girls.

If they were unsuccessful they would stagger en mass, like a tribe of chambrayed Neanderthals to Cashel Mall, to put their horrible fists into the faces of anybody who dared challenge their manlihood by glancing in their general direction. I hardly ever ventured near The Strip on Friday and Saturday nights, however when I did inadvertently stumble into the land of chambray and spew, I felt relatively safe due to the white flag perched on my nose. I have no idea what goes on in the minds of men who like to hit other men just in case other men hit on them and they kind of like it, but I'm pretty sure they are hard wired with two conditions that must be met before the angriness is meted out.

1. The man must not be woman.
2. The man must not be wearing glasses.

You'd hope there would be more, like 'The man must not be lying on the ground', or 'The man must not be over 80', or 'The man must not be already having the shit kicked out of him by three other men', but unfortunately this doesn't seem to be the case. Glasses unmaketh the man. I don't know what we spec-wearers become in the drunken eyes of Mr Fisty, but it's something infuriatingly unpunchable. They may push us out of the way as they travel along their vector of violence, but as long as your glasses don't fall off when you hit the ground, you'll live to not fight another day.

Which is why, many years ago while walking past The Strip, a chambrayed chap pulled his hazy gaze away from the rump of some 16 year old lamb dressed as mutton, to glower at me in my 508's, purple Mossimo top, terrible bowl cut and glasses, and not punch me. I could see he wanted to. He was slowly expanding, rising and falling from his seat as if his angry anus was letting off a staccatoish series of furious farts, but the two pieces of prescription plastic over my eyes were an invisible force field that kept him at bay. I smiled, smug in my short-sightedness. He squinted and shook and slathered and slurred, "The library's that way mate", before returning to perv and his pint.

Which is where I am now. Not the Christchurch library. That's still in the Red Zone and The Strip is long gone, except for Coyote's which managed to stay erect thanks to a two inch coating of spew and jizz. I'm in the Melbourne City Library, which for a city of four million people is surprisingly small, although it does have a piano that you can tinkle on as long as you're Grade 5 or above and the person playing it is into that sort of thing. I love the library. It's full of books and stuff. There's also lots of computers, and yesterday I booked a computer with a scanner to scan something at home on my computer because I don't have a scanner at home. Here in the silent reading room they even have little desks with power points so not only can you read a book, you can plug your computer in. It's a bit of a hassle lugging my old desktop PC here on the tram, and sometimes it takes two trips because the monitor's quite heavy, but it's worth it. To top it all off they have wireless internet, so I can book the scanner with my computer and then watch all the angry people who want to use the scanner but can't because it's booked, even though I'm not using it.

Not having a library has been hard for the people of Christchurch who wear glasses. Not having The Strip has been hard for the people of Christchurch who wear chambray. No books. No booze. No biffo. The things that made the city of my birth great were suddenly no more. Sure, there were suburban libraries and bars and brawls but it wasn't the same. In Cashel Mall on a Friday night, people knew your name as they glassed you; 'Ian!' they'd cry as they clouted you with their bottle of Steiny Pure, and if the bottle didn't break they'd offer you a suck on their stubbie as they put the boot in. The Christchurch Central Library was huge, much bigger than Melbourne's, and it had escalators and scanners and a special area for Margaret Mahy to wear her freaky wig. You don't get that in Bishopdale or Shirley.

In January I went back to Christchurch and along with some very talented friends, put together a show called 'The Complete History of Christchurch Abridged'. We did it in Hagley Park and about 25,000 people saw it. They turned up with food, and rugs and booze and dogs, and they all laughed and cried about their city and all the shit they'd gone through, surrounded by other people who loved the city and had gone through the same shit as them. We were all proud of the show but what made this one special was that in some small way, I think we made a difference. One woman, who had been trapped in a collapsed building for three hours told us this was the first time she had laughed since Feb 22nd 2011. One old fella with tears in his eyes gripped both my hands and just said thank you over and over again. We took the piss out of those in power, we said the things everyone wanted to say, and it was immediate, affecting and alive.

And it was free. So I hope some chambray clad chap suffering from Strip withdrawal came along and had a laugh. And I hope he remembers it in ten years time when I'm walking down Cashel Mall on a Friday night wearing contact lenses.

Can't get you out of my Radiohead

2012-03-03T15:36:00.000+13:00

It must do your head in being in Radiohead and not being Thom Yorke. Not only does Thom get to be greedy with extra letters in both of his names, he's also the only one anybody recognises as being in Radiohead, except perhaps for the tall skinny one called Jonny I think, who leaps in super slow-motion like a girl into a carvan in the video for Street Spirit (Fade Out). Stuttery, squinty, winky Thom IS Radiohead, and with one doleful squinty wink of his sad glad-eye, all doors open and impediments evaporate. Imagine being Jonny Whats-his-name leaping all slow-motioniny through the doors of The Ivy and being told before you hit the ground that you can't come in because you don't have a booking and nobody knows who you are. Jonny would press his slow-mo-nose up to the glass and inside Thom would be scoffing and squinting with Damon Albarn, Richard Ashcroft, Debbie Harry, Chris Martin, Chrissy Hynde, Mark Knopfler, Nick Cave, Jarvis Cocker, Tom Petty, Trent Reznor, Sting, Gwen Stefani, Michael Stipe, Jon Bon Jovi, Florence Welch and Huey Lewis. Michael Hutchence would be hanging around somewhere as well. Jonny would plead with the maitre d and perhaps play the 'rain down' bit of Paranoid Android that he wrote on an ondes martenot but to no avail. He would be tossed in slow-motion back onto the street in winter with an empty tummy and nothing to do but breath on the glass and write rude messages to his lead singer, like 'Thom Dorke!, or 'At least I can read music!', or 'Ronan Keating thinks you're a muppet!'. The rest of Blur, The Verve, Blondie, Coldplay, The Pretenders, Dire Straits, The Badseeds, Pulp, The Heartbreakers, Nine Inch Nails, The Police, No Doubt, REM, Bon Jovi, The Machine and The News, INXS and JD Fortune would all be doing the same and the window would look like an angry version of the wall outside Abbey Road studios, except be on glass and written with angry fingers in angry breath and nothing to do with The Beatles except for the fact that Radiohead like The Beatles can sell out Shea Stadium in less time than it takes Jonny to leap into a caravan...much less time.

That would do your head in as well. I've done a few shows and one of the absolute joys is waiting for that email everyday to reveal you've sold no tickets. The emails usually come though at around 5pm and I'd be circling and wagging like a laptop dog, salivating and slobbering and ready to tear the email open with my teeth to reveal the rows of '0's for all four shows in a 30 seat venue with no airconditioning and a much bigger poster for the show after yours above the urinals. The disappointment never lasted long and only led to an dance exponential increase in expectation, hoping against hope the next one would contain a mystical '1'. 0,0,0,0,0,0.....1! Never has binary been so erotic and exciting. Someone somewhere has spent $16 on a concession ticket to my site-specific one man show featuring an ear-splitting burst of pop music, defecation and aggressive masturbation.

Radiohead don't get to experience any of that. Thom just gets on Facebook and sends a message to his friends like, 'Hey guys, doing a world tour. Come to my show!!!! We'll have a drink after', or 'Creep has had over 23 million views, that's almost viral (I reckon). Come to the show and see stuff in for reals life yo!', or 'Hey World - Looking for some late night madness? Come along to the biggest stadium nearest to you. They'll be performances by heaps of artists. Probably quite a bit of drinking and it's only a gold coin/koha for entry.', and before Thom can poke Jonny they've sold 1.9 trillion tickets and 2.8 million FB groups have been set up asking for extra shows or whether they can possibly make it down to Invercargill 'cos there's heaps of Radiohead fans down there and they'd be sure to show Thom and the other guys a good time.

Social networking. My old flatmate Michael Legge tweeted about the death of someone he made up and then The Guardian did a story about it because it was trendy. I was there in the 90's when Michael put his knob in the mouth of his girlfriend's dog to cheer her up...his girlfriend, not the dog, but that happened before Twitter so nothing appeared in The Guardian about it. In the library where I'm writing this, I saw Amanda Palmer and her hubby Neil Gaiman perform and read to over 400 people and the only advertising they did was a couple of tweets. Just amazing. Here's a pic of the concert.

Can you see me? Just treat it like a game of Where's Greggy? Given up yet? OK, I'll put you out of your misery. I'm the one on the right checking my emails on my phone to see if anybody has purchased a ticket to my one-man show that I wasn't even doing. What an arse. Who goes to a ninja gig and checks their emails on their phone? If I had been tweeting about being at a gig I heard about via a tweet that might have been cooly ironic, but no, I was...bloody hell, the guy next to me in the supposedly silent room of the library has put on headphones and is listening to The Party Rock Anthem at an eardrum piercingly loud volume while he sends his emails. Who does that? The whole bloody library has free Wifi, why can't he FRO and go and blast his LMFAO SOFP? Oooooh...maybe's he's been reading over my shoulder as he's just petulantly slammed his laptop shut and stalked out of the room. He's left his Macbook here. If it was a PC I could change his screensaver to read something hilarious like, 'You're a dork', or 'I can hear your shitty music', or 'Greggy thinks you're a muppet', but Apples are Greek to me.

Where was I? I don't know. This whole post is rambling. Oh hell, he's come back so I'm going to finish here without checking for typos and spelling eras. I didn't even get to talk about what I've been doing for the last few months instead of writing insightful crap like this. Have you missed me?

The Birthday Girl

2011-12-17T15:13:00.001+13:00

Today is my birthday. Happy birthday to me. To celebrate I shall give you all a gift to treasure, laminate and stick above your bed or bog...a photo of me dressed up as Supergirl.

I'm at the stage in my career where I don't get out of bed for less than five bottles of pinot, $100 cash and a pound of grapes, and luckily that was exactly what this gig was paying. So I got out of bed. I even did my own makeup. I'm so beautiful. So very very beautiful. Women must hate me when I become more beautiful than them by simply donning a blond wig, green eye shadow and some lipstick for my lips and cheeks. I was part of a 'meet and greet' duo which required me to say, 'Hi, you look SUPER!, I'm SUPERgirl, welcome to our SUPER Christmas party, I hope you have a SUPER time!' I didn't have to say that, but I find it's easier to relentlessly repeat one line so you can stop thinking and go to your happy place to kill yourself.

Actually it wasn't that bad. At least I wasn't alone. I was meeting and greeting with Superman!

We make a lovely couple. Regular readers might recognise Superman as Lucius Malfoy to my Severus Snape or as Randy to my Candy. I've sort of already posted this next photo, but it's my birthday so I can do it again to further reinforce how pretty am.

I'd be very surprised if any women reading this are not seething with jealousy and making sure their boyfriends and husbands don't catch a glimpse of me looking so pretty and provocative. In this one I think I look a bit like an emaciated Susan Boyle on crack. I'd love to tell you how old I've turned today but instead I'll let you guess from these photos. Some people might say I'm too old to dress up as women for wine and grapes but to be honest, there's not much else I'm qualified to do...except maybe become a high school drama teacher. And now these photos have been released onto the interweb that career bridge has probably been burnt as well. Just as well.

New On-Bored

2011-12-11T13:39:00.001+13:00

I never learn. Blogging about something you despise, in this case a Canadian band that rhymes with Bickelnack, will inevitably lead to advertisements appearing on ones blog for the very thing you have been raging against. The machine that is Google Adsense cannot distinguish between pro or NO! And the only winners are Chad Kroeger and Brother.


Thank you Greg for promoting my new album. Love Chad.

I was going to be horrendously clever and pay 1000 monkeys to click on Bickelnacks's ad without buying their album, and not stop until the band was bankrupt so I could call them Nickelbankrupt, or one of the monkeys took lots of drugs and typed the complete works of William Burroughs. Then I noticed the advertisement was from Marbecks Music, and as much as I'm disgusted at 'New Zealand's leading music specialist' peddling such filth, I cannot bring myself to go all rogue-clicker and destroy an institution that's been operating since 1934. Also I suspect some of the monkeys may not be able to resist buying Bickelnack's album to throw their own shit at.

On the subject of monkeys, I watched 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' on an Air New Zealand flight last month and thoroughly enjoyed it, especially the bit where Bright Eyes started burning like fire and killed Draco Malfoy. If all the monkeys had escaped to march on Alberta to throw shit at Chad Kroeger it would have been even better, but you can't have everything.

I returned to Christchurch again a few weeks ago and was excited to see what new filmic offerings Air New Zealand had ready for my viewing pleasure while I harassed harassed flight attendants for yet another plastic bottle of Brancott Estate Reserve Merlot. I went straight to the 'New On-Board' screen and to my horror saw this...

Not much to choose from is there. I'd forked out an extra $30 and all I was getting was a gluten free salmon meal, four bottles of merlot, a gin and tonic and a whole lot of bloody Harry Potter films. Why do I need to see Harry Potter films? Everyone knows that Draco Malfoy gets killed by an ape and Voldemort turns out to be Harry's father and gets his end away in a Qantas toilet while flying to Mumbai. Boring! How can a whole lot of Harry Potter films be considered suitable viewing for a 'New On-Board' classification? If the section was called, 'Films That Feature Lots of Plummy British Actors Except Hugh Grant That You've Probably Seen a Million Bloody Times on the Tele', I would understand, but honestly Air New Zealand, this is a misleading and shameful act for a national carrier. Still, there was another whole page of 'New On-Board' films to go, so surely I'd find a recently released cracker there to get me through the next three hours...

Look Greg, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.

WTF! So, out of 12 'new' films, eight were Harry Potters, one I'd already seen, one was released in 2007, one in 2009 and Horrible Bosses, which admittedly was released in 2011, but has Jennifer Aniston in it who I cannot face since searing my eyeballs on 'Love Happens'.

I'm flying back to Melbourne on Friday and if there isn't a serious shake-up in the movie selection there will be serious trouble. I may pretend I didn't order a gluten free meal when really I did. I may order 20 Brancott Estate Merlots and hand them out for free to grateful Seat+Bag passengers. I may even express my anger by playing Words With Friends up-to, during and after take-off, and if challenged by an power-hungry tyrannical trolley dolly, sprint down the aisle, lock myself in the toilet and continue playing Words With Friends with Ralph Fiennes and Alec Baldwin until one of us comes out on top.

Nationalback

2011-11-25T15:24:00.000+13:00

Bad things are happening again.

The first bad thing happening again is this.

If you know me you know Nickelback makes me spit with rage. Just as I was about to spit with rage I saw this right next to it.

It seems even the Nickelback poster-putter-uppers know any sane person wouldn't be able to resist spitting on Chad Kroeger's latest assault on everything good in the world. Chad Kroeger is a total total utter utter dick dick of immense proportions who probably has a tiny tiny dick dick. I know my posts of late have consisted of calling people dicks and crudely paint-shopping human heads onto dogs and mythical creatures, but I'm sure it's just a phase. If you're looking for a sophisticated and sagacious musically political statement go here. If you're happy to see a photo of me dressed up as Chad Kroeger, lead singer of Nickelback... read on.

This is one hell of a skeleton to drag out of the closet, but my hypocrisy threatens to eat away at me until I become a skeleton who is too weak to open the closet and let the other skeleton out. Here is a picture of Chad Kroeger.

And here is a picture of me in my Chad Kroeger costume, distributing free copies of Nickelback's third album 'Silver Side Up' to poor unsuspecting children at Auckland Zoo in 2002.

The costume captures with uncanny accuracy Chad's long flowing locks, facial hair and enormous head, and as you can see by the photo, the children couldn't resist him. I was mobbed and hugged and generally treated like a nine foot furry Jesus with a box of free CDs and the occasional free ice-cream. I did this many times and the shame lingers still. I sold out in the worst possible way. I would have felt better if I'd handed out bags of fags, crack and copies of Mein Kampf. I inflicted Nickelback on the untainted susceptible ears of young children who should have been listening to beautiful music like 'If You Come Back' by Blue, instead of 'How You Remind Me.' Wow. I've just listened to If You Come Back and if he hasn't already Gary Barlow should be calling his lawyers, because it's a complete rip off of Gary's opus 'Back For Good'. Why couldn't I have been dressed as a nine foot Gary or Robbie handing out free copies of Take That's third album 'Nobody Else'? Why!

Right, now that's out of my system I'll move onto the other bad thing that's happening again. I'm flying to New Zealand on Sunday for a few weeks work and barring a political miracle, I shall arrive on the first day of the second term of the fifth National Government. They may even garner enough votes to govern alone. The previous national government introduced major cuts in social welfare spending, introduced market rents for state houses, retained a tax on pensions despite promising to abolish it, sold the BNZ, NZ Rail, The Ministry of Works, the commercial arm of Radio NZ, Contact Energy and its 51.6% share of Auckland International Airport. Auckland International Airport is very profitable and it looks like its profits are only going to increase. They divided the Electricity Corporation of NZ into Meridian Energy, Mighty River Power and Genesis Power with the intention of selling them off. They introduced the Employment Contracts Act to abolish collective bargaining and weaken the power of unions. Government standards in building were relaxed in the belief that market forces and competition would lead to high quality construction, but market forces and competition decided to build a whole lot of leaky homes instead. The really scary thing is that a lot of these decisions were just a continuation of what the previous Labour Government had been up to.

And now it's happening again. John Key wants to sell more of NZ's profit making assets and even financial analysts say it's a stupid short-term solution to avoid borrowing money. If it goes ahead the only winners will be the Australian investment banks advising John on the best way to do it, one of which will reportedly receive more than $100 million for their 'services'. The fifth National Government will hit the poorest and most vulnerable members of our society and increase the disparity between rich and poor. The New Zealand rich/poor gap is ninth worst in the world, so at least we don't have far to fall to hit rock bottom. As shown by his handling of The Hobbit episode, John is happy to trample over the rights of workers and will change employment law retrospectively to keep the men with the money happy. Especially if he can nab photos like this during an election campaign.

It's all getting a bit serious so I'll finish with my one and only encounter with a National Party MP. Years ago I was on an Air New Zealand flight from somewhere to somewhere, and walked down the aisle to find Ruth Richardson sitting in my seat on the aisle. She was busy scribbling down the best way to use high unemployment levels to pull labour costs down, so I politely 'ahemed'. She said without looking up, "I need this seat, I've got work to do." I was slightly taken aback and said, "I think you're sitting in my seat." She replied, without looking up, "I need this seat to work, you can sit in the middle." I hate sitting in the middle. Ruth Richardson hates sitting in the middle. Everyone hates sitting in the middle. Her seat was in the middle but Ruth felt she was entitled to sit on the aisle because everyone knows it's much easier to find ways to shaft the underprivileged on the aisle than in the middle. She could have asked if she could swap seats, she could have looked at me, she could have smiled, she could have even said a solitary please or a solitary thank you as I squashed past her to sit in the middle. She could have stood up to let me sit in her seat but no, she was too busy working. Her sense of entitlement to my seat was overpowering and I sat in the middle and said nothing. I wish I'd had the intestinal fortitude to say no, but I didn't. I cast my vote today and said no. I also made sure I had an aisle seat for my flight on Sunday.

Two Dicks Talking and a Microphone

2011-11-17T13:00:00.001+13:00

John Key is a dick. He's worth about $50 million so he's obviously a clever dick, but he's still a dick.

It's not nice or clever to call someone a dick but I can't help myself. John Key is the bell to my Pavlov's dog. Every time I see his grinning face I shake my fist and scream, 'You sir, are a dick!', before drooling uncontrollably while trying to lick my balls.

No Greg, you're a dick.

I've never met John Key. The only connection we have is that we both went to Burnside High School and got B.Com degrees at Canterbury University. Then our paths diverged. John went to Harvard and reaped $50,000,000 as head of Asian Foreign Exchange for Merrill Lynch. I went to Auckland and reaped $50 by dressing up in green tights and waving a cardboard sword.

Spot the dick.

I'm sure if John met me he would think I'm a dick. He may not drool and try to lick his own balls, but I'm pretty sure he would take one look at me in my spotted tights and chuckle to himself, 'That pale waify young man is a dick. I can't believe he was head boy! I can't believe he has a B.Com degree! I can't believe we went to the same high school and university! I know what, I'll get Anne Tolley to close Burnside High and Canterbury University down just like we closed down my primary school, and destroy any record of his existence. And just to rub it in, I'll cut all funding for the arts and plays and all that other prancy stuff dicks do and give the money to Peter Jackson, because PJ's my mate and we had a great chat on my talkshow on Radio Live. I mean, if there's no money in theatre and dance and stuff, why do the dicks do it?'

I've asked myself that question many times.

I was just getting used to John Key being a dick before I saw a photo of John with an even bigger dick. Not content with being a dick and leading the country for three more years, John's decided to try and insert the mother-of-all-dicks back into parliament just in case enough dicks don't vote for him to let him dick the country singlehandedly.

It's quite a clever move. John Banks is a cock colossus and no matter how much of a dick Key makes of himself, Banksie is assured of cocking things up to a whole new level. Not only is Banksie a dick, he's also a bit of a racist, (I know I put in lots of links, but click on this one, watch it for 30 seconds and then go have a shower), and a bit of a homophobe. Here's a delightful wee Banksie gem from the 1993 parliamentary debates on outlawing discrimination on the basis of sexuality.

"The problem with this homosexual business we've now made legal in his country is that so many of these creeps have now boldly crept out of the wardrobe and parliament is soon going to legislate... to allow sexual deviants or people with sexual alternatives to work... with immunity."

The only positive trait of John Banks I'm aware of is that he's a big supporter of the SPCA and likes dogs. Then again Hitler liked dogs as well.

John and John invited every journalist and cameraman in the country to their tea-party, and then got the shock of their lives when somebody managed to leave a microphone in a pouch on their table and record their 'private' conversation. Apparently they talk about how to get rid of another dick called Don. John Key thinks what happened is 'News Of The World' journalism and the publishing of the tape could in some circumstances lead to suicide, even though he "genuinely can't recall" anything he said and there's nothing of interest on the tape anyway.

I'm sure someone will leak it soon. Here's my guess on what we'll hear.

John Key: 'Have you heard of Greg Cooper?'
Banksie: 'Yeah. He was dressed as a dog at an SPCA Function I gave a speech at.'
John Key: 'He's a dick.'
Banksie: 'Yeah, he's a dick.'
John Key: 'Is that your pouch?'

A Twitter of Tibetan Mastiffs

2011-11-11T13:24:00.001+13:00

It's been well over a month since my last post, which in blog months is 7 months and in dog blog months is 49. I read somewhere you should be tweeting at least every two hours to build a Twitter following, but I have no idea what the vital statistics are with blogging. A tweet every two hours means twelve tweets a day, or approximately 360 tweets a month. If you were a tweeting dog this would equate to 2,520 tweets a month, 84 tweets a day, or approximately 3.5 tweets an hour, which wouldn't leave much time for sniffing dog bums and licking your dog bollocks. The only person I follow who can out-tweet a dog is Stephen Fry, perhaps because he looks a bit like a big cuddly dog with an astounding vocabulary of barks.


This is shit but I spent 10 minutes on it and don't want to feel like I wasted my time.

I'll digress here before this becomes a post of Stephen Fry's pate crudely pasted on pictures of pooches using Microsoft Paint.

George 'Gatling-Gun' Michael, as he is known in the Twitterverse, can give Stephen a good run for his money when his anger is roused, although he then usually goes quiet for a few days to recover and sing Club Tropicana with his big orchestra. The really fantastic thing he does though is occasionally end tweets with an 'and'. 140 characters isn't enough for George to express his outrage and when he starts firing nobody else you follow can get a tweet in sideways... except for Hamish Keith. What's even better is that Hamish managed to lob his tweet through the one minute window straight after George's 'and' tweet, so you could read them together before George's follow up. George was angry with the portrayal of two gay characters on Eastenders and Hamish was angry that no one remembered today is Armistice Day. So together they go...

So far, Christian has been beaten up 3 times that I can remember, and is now accused of child molestation. Sayed has been disowned and no one seems to remember that this is Armistice Day end of WWI at 11 am - we commemorate the defeat at Gallipoli & ignore the peace.

Either my life is tragic or that's incredible. Two tweets from two men who have probably never met each other combine to create a mystic megatweet full of hidden depth and wonder. This sort of thing should be actively encouraged by forcing everyone who tweets to pop an 'and' at their end. I'm sure Twitter could bump up the character allowance to 144, (which is a square and a MUCH more pleasing number than 140), so Tweeters don't feel short changed. Then we could all just sit back and watch the wonder unfold. Rather than a series of unconnected observations, our feeds would become a neverending story...ahhhhh, ahhhhh, ahhhhh.

This one only took 5 minutes but I'm much happier with it.

Surely someone out there could talk to someone and make this happen... the neverending tweet that is, not Limahl's head on a Tibetan Mastiff.

Just before I finish I'd like to start up what I hope will be a sporadically amusing section of the blog called 'Only In Australia'. Let's kick things off with this photo of a truck I spied this morning parked on Little Collins Street.

And a close-up to truly appreciate the genius at work.

Only one question. Did they know? Oi. Oi. Oi.

ENO OH-NO!

2011-10-04T23:46:00.001+13:00

I'm writing this post under the influence of my spasming gullet. It hasn't spasmed for quite a while but due to a combination of over-exuberant fisting in the ring and swallowing big meat, I'm now spitting saliva into a glass to avoid swallowing anything. I could post a picture of the glass, which is almost full of my frothy boy bile, however nobody needs to see things like that. Just putting the image in your imagination is enough.

But enough of that, let's talk about Kate Bush. I was getting a bit weepy listening to This Woman's Work yesterday when I remembered that Kate wrote Wuthering Heights when she was 18. 18! Quite a few of the songs off her first album were written when she was 13! 13! 18-13=5. 5!

Sorry. I've just been side-tracked by three recent comments on the Wuthering Heights YouTube link. If you watch the video you'll see them but if you haven't got time I'll copy and paste them here, because unlike 99.999% of YouTube comments, these are quite funny and not racist.

my cat, mr. nibbles took first place in our towns talent show performing this number. only hitch was, he refused to wear a red dress...insisted on white...little dickens..and quite cheeky.

dbeard451 5 days ago 9
Is it bad im doing A-level English and this is the closest i've come to studying the book?

Trinitykill 1 week ago 5

fuck this song, I read the book constantly expecting her ghost to come back because she sings the chorus creepingly like "I've come home", argh it just fucking ended with that wanker Heathcliff dying and no walking Cathy corpse to be found, disappointing.

asapics 10 hours ago

I hope Kate has read these comments, how she would laugh! Kate is great and to my shame I didn't know much about her until my musically astute partner Sarah showed me there's a lot more to Catherine Bush from Bexleyheath than that Heathcliff song and the one she does with Peter Gabriel. Peter originally wanted Dolly Parton but she turned him down once she found out he was only pretending to be Kenny Rogers on the phone.

She's releasing a new album soon and if it's as half as good as her last double disc delight Aerial it will be a bit disappointing but still OK. These days she lives in a castle somewhere and writes songs about her whiteware. It's a fantastic song and features 8 bars of the best lyrics you'll ever hear...

Slooshy sloshy slooshy sloshy
Get that dirty shirty clean
Slooshy sloshy slooshy sloshy
Make those cuffs and collars gleam

Gullet update: no spasms for 20 minutes and an empty wine glass.

I've written three songs in my life and I can say with all honesty they were, are and always will be a steaming pile of musical and lyrical KFaeCes. The sloshing sound as I swish my cup of bile has more musicality than the self-indulgent crap I committed to 24 track, 2 inch tape back in 1996. This is hard to admit, but all three of the songs I wrote, played, sang, engineered and produced were worse than ANYTHING done by THE FEELERS. Yes...they were that bad. And I was 22. Three years older than Kate when she wrote Wuthering Heights.

These audio monstrosities were recorded at Westside Studios, near Shepherds Bush in London. I was working there for free doing important things like making tea and buying fags for fat producers. It was bloody great fun and I got to meet some big names, although half the time I didn't know it. One day a bald middle-aged man turned up and I went out to help him carry in his gear. 'Hi, I'm Brian', he said. 'Hi, I'm Greg', I said. Then I carried in his H3000 Ultra-Harmonizer and some other knob boxes. We had a nice chat about New Zealand and I made him a cup of tea. Later, Sam the Kiwi assistant engineer, (who played drums on one of my dirges although he was very drunk at the time), asked me if I knew who the bald middle aged man was. I said 'No.' He said 'Brian Eno.' I said, 'Oh yeah, he does stuff with U2 doesn't he?' Sigh.

The B50U2's and some balding guy.

Before I get onto my three songs I'm sure you're all desperate to know of any other famous people I met and if they were nice and if I recognised them so I'll shamelessly name drop by name, if I recognised them and whether they were an arsehole or nice.

Jimmy Nail YES Arsehole.
Robson Greene NO Nice.
The guy who did the TV show with Robson Green NO Arsehole.
Elvis Costello YES Nice.
Nenah Cherry YES Nice. (Even after I repeatedly called her Stella.)
Brett Anderson YES Odd.
Bernard Butler YES Nice. (Didn't stop me nicking his wee amp which he left behind though.)
Suggs YES Nice.
The lead singer from UB40. YES Nice. (Although he was off his chops and kept screaming 'I'm a fucking Maori' at me.)
Johnny Marr NO. Very nice. (That probably will have changed after I sent him off in the wrong taxi at 2am.)

I can't remember a lot about the three songs I recorded on my reel of 2 inch tape but what I do remember is much too much. One of them was called 'Close To Special' and was about Godzilla accidently stomping on someone he loved in Tokyo. I kid you not. I can only remember the first four lines and they went like this...

Tokyo, is on its knees,

I could crush, the city with ease.

People stare with saucer eyes,

Smitten by my brilliant disguise.

Smitten by my brilliant disguise??WTF was I thinking? I was drunk quite a bit of the time but that's no excuse. Another of my tunes was entitled 'Toronto' and not only rhymed Toronto with 'The Lone Ranger and Tonto' but featured a chorus reminiscient of John Rowles in the Gerard Roofing TVC that went...

I wanna go T, T, T, T, T, T, T to Toronto.

Over and over and over again. I can't remember anything about the third song which is a minor blessing. I even had the naive audacity to play them to one of the studio owners Clive Langer and after listening to them he managed to keep a straight face and say, 'Well, you've written three songs Greg, that means you can write some more.'

Thankfully I didn't take his advice, although I left that reel of 2 inch tape in London, so the world may still be in danger.

Gullet update: no spasms for two hours and another empty wine glass.

Band of Brothers

2011-09-26T13:22:00.001+13:00

Lots of people are playing rugby in New Zealand at the moment. Lots of people are watching people play rugby in New Zealand at the moment. Not lots of people are watching our play about people playing rugby in New Zealand at the moment. That's OK though. We're doing our play in the frigid Fanzone and everyone knows plays are best enjoyed in a toasty warm theatre with a glass of wine in one hand and your penis in another. That's not strictly true as you don't always need wine to enjoy a play, but it certainly helps, especially if you want to glass an actor or cut your wrists at half time.

Although our audiences have been small, they have been perfectly formed and appreciative of our artistic endeavours. One small boy was so appreciative he came up after the show and gave me $4. His mother refused to let me give it back and the cherubic wee creature gazed up at me with pity, his eyes clearly saying, 'You need this more than I do.' It was exactly the same look I'd received from the cherub who gave me a tiny parcel of glad-wrapped bacon sandwiches after my portrayal of the Big Bad Wolf in everyone's favourite kids show 'Blowing Bacon'. It takes a special sort of talent to make four year olds feel sorry for you

Speaking of kids, one woman was apoplectic with rage and confusion and accused the event organiser of staging a 'kids show fuck fest'. I admit some of our content is risqué. We say 'bullshit' once, 'feck-kekkin' quite a lot, one of us dresses up as a giant testicle and all of us dress up as the Village People, however it's hardly a fuck fest. The only fuck fest performance I've ever been involved in was an illicit short film entitled 'Horny Ambush', shot during downtime while making 'The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe'. Although there are only four copies in existence I'm forever terrified one will leak onto YouTube and cripple my extensive international film and television career. I'm not proud of what I did, but in my defence I'd hardly slept for two months and was wearing green tights.

Another highlight was having the New Zealand Army Band open for us. This was a BIG deal. The New Zealand Army Band are huge in New Zealand and not only are they the ARMY, they are also a BAND. Here's a picture of them tromboning.

There's a lot more to the New Zealand Army Band than trombones though. They have trumpets, and tubas and snare drums and I've heard rumours if the National Government can sell our Skyhawks, they are going to invest in a lethal sousaphone. New Zealand doesn't have enough money for an army and a band so John Key came up with the brilliant idea of sticking bayonets onto trombones, mortars in tubas and grenades in French Horns and voila, you have an immaculately dressed killing machine that can also play 'Sweet Georgia Brown' and 'Let Me Entertain You'. Often the last sound an enemy combatant will hear is 'Hold That Tiger' before they explode or get stabbed in the face by a trombone bumper.

Parp...parp....parp....parp...PARP...PARP...PARP....PARP...STAB...Hold that tiger!

Scary stuff!

Just before I finish I'd like to bring your attention to the 'Subscribe via email' box in the top right corner of your screen. If you put your email address in the box and click the 'Subscribe' button you will have subscribed to my blog via email and every time I blog you will get an email telling you how to increase the girth of your member. You may even get an email telling you I've blogged...who knows.

Legs 11

2011-09-19T15:38:00.003+12:00

29 years, 5 months and 16 days ago I played my first game of football. I was on the right wing for Nomads United AFC and we lost. Here is a photo of a photo of me before we lost.

Today people pay $1.99 for apps to make their photos look all retro like this, but all I had to do was take a photo of an old photo with my old old iPhone and it came out all blurry and bigfootish for free.


Gerry Brownlee in the Avon River

I hadn't thought about my short and unsuccessful football career for many years until a few days ago, when I found myself dressed as an All Black in a park while tens of young children kicked balls and ignored me. It was a Saturday morning and it was cold and I was wearing short shorts pulled up high like an 80 year old man. As I looked at Potpinto dressed as a giant testicle my mind drifted back to those frosty football mornings on Tulett Park, dressed in the Chelsea red, white and blue of Nomads United AFC, the second oldest football team in the Christchurch area.

If you can't tell it's me from the face the legs are a dead giveaway. They haven't changed in 29 years and here's a photo to prove it.

The 2011 RWC Opening Ceremony

As you can see the only difference between my 8 year old and 37 year old legs is the complete absence of colour. It's as if my lazy 8 year old heart decided it couldn't be arsed pumping bloody blood to my legs, leaving them to translucently wither like two sad saplings on the White Tree of Gondor. As all my manly male friends filled out their hamstrings and quadriceps with ease my upper legs stubbornly refused to thicken up and remained milky, thin and insipid. I even started squatting at the local YMCA in a vain attempt to bring on the beef, but soon stopped when I found myself at the bottom of a squat unable to rise and had to ask the female trainer to lift the bar off my shoulders. No fat hammies were worth that kind of embarrassment.

I can't remember much about my football days. I was placed in the 10Fs and from memory that was the team where all the uncoordinated athletically inept boys with pencil legs were placed to make sure we couldn't spoil any other teams with our bad apple ball skills. We were absolute shit. We lost every single game except one when the other team didn't turn up. Our coach's pigeon toed son was in goal and he never tied his laces and fell over often. I was the only one who bothered to obey our coach's instructions by staying in position, meaning I spent 90 minutes every Saturday morning freezing my tits off running up and down the right side of the field as 19 other boys flew around like an angry solar system orbiting a ball I never saw. Even the opposition goalie would join the melee once they realised there wasn't a chance in hell we were ever going to launch a shot at goal. Our valiant coach ran up and down the sideline screaming 'Don't bunch!' as I ran up and down the sideline wishing I was in my nice warm bed thumbing through The Sword of Shannara.

I was terrified of the ball so my weekly 90 minute shuttle runs were a minor blessing. Possessing the ball meant you were ripe to be kicked in the shins by all of the opposing team trying to get the ball off you and most of your own team trying to get the ball off you. I did not consider that to be fun and on the rare occasion when somebody passed to me I immediately kicked it back to them and ran in the opposite direction. During one memorable game our goalie decided he wanted to join the thrashing throng and after some hasty negotiation I agreed to swap positions with him. He pulled his jersey half over his head and immediately tripped over his laces. I got mine halfway over my head and tripped over him. As we both lay blinded in the box like thrashing red, white and blue worms in the sun the other team scored and an unknown assailant kicked me in the shin....probably our coach.

As I gaze at that blurry snapshot of my life on a sunny Saturday morning in April 1982 I am filled with questions, all of which start with 'What the fuck....? My brother was rather good at football so had I convinced myself genes would get me through even though his legs were wide and colourful? Was I foolishly inspired by the All Whites qualifying for the 1982 World Cup? Maybe I was drunk?

Anyway, if you want to see my 8 year old legs running around a park you'd better be quick. Here's the schedule and once we're done my legs will return to long pants and Australia with no hamstrings attached.

BYO CBD

2011-09-09T15:10:00.001+12:00

Most of you will be aware that Christchurch is significantly smaller than it was this time last year. Gerry Brownlee, the Earthquake Recovery Minister is significantly bigger than he was this time last year. Unless you're Rachel Hunter, Phil Keoghan or Scribe there's no way you're getting into the CBD to see where Christchurch is going however I have discovered the truth and with no regard to my personal safety shall divulge it to you all. Gerry Brownlee is eating Christchurch. I have created a stunningly realistic and disturbing representation of Gerry Brownlee hard at work in the red zone, eating bars, yeah wall to wall, door to door, hall to hall, he's gonna eat 'em all.

Gerryzilla hard at work

By the end of 2012 it is estimated 60% of the Christchurch CBD will be in Gerry's tummy but will that be enough to sate Gerry's insatiable appetite for all things historic and Gothic? Not bloody likely. This is just the beginning. Once New Zealand has elected the one Key to rule them all, Gerry will be unleashed to stomp up and down the length of The Long White Cloud eating anything with a smidgen of beauty or design aesthetic. Gerry and John's wealthy friends will erect tilt-slab monstrosities to celebrate before Gerry shits bricks over any electorate foolish enough to have elected a Labour MP.

On a happier note it's a beautiful sunny day and the entire country is fizzing at the bung with the prospect of watching Jonah Lomu being shot out of a cannon with a million bucks worth of fireworks up his bum. The RWC opening extravaganza is also going to feature 1000 dancing volunteers and video projections so it sounds like we're in for a big flash mob with some flash slides. I can't wait. Maybe The Feelers will sing their Jesus Jones song as Jonah Lomu's bum lights up Gerryzilla on top of Mt Albert breathing fire into Helen Clarke's old electorate office? Hayley Westenra might have a wardrobe malfunction during the national anthem when Vince Harder makes a grab for her right tit? Peter Jackson might just CGI the whole thing and we'll never know? Who knows.

All I do know is that the National Government will not allow the All Blacks to not win the Rugby World Cup as this is the only thing that could stop them getting into power. If you've seen that marvelous film The Running Man you'll know what can be done with televisual-trickery and I suspect Weta Digital are already whipping up AB wins galore with their MASSIVE software as I type. If the US can fake a moon landing PJ can fake a World Cup win in his sleep. PJ owes John and Gerryzilla big time for coming into bat for him during The Hobbit fiasco so I'm sure he'll do a terrific job.

I'd like to finish now with a shout out to all the beavers beavering away on The Ultimate Beaver Campaign 2011. As a dwarf said in Twin Peaks, 'It is happening again.' Like the inhabitants of Twin Peaks, the beavers know something terrible is going on but have no understanding of why it is happening and how to stop it...happening again. Recently Pom Poms let me know that my blogs of that time are being circulated amongst the bewildered beavers, so to those of you who continue to contact Nippon Meat Packers and struggle under the weight of ineptitude that is the Grand Beaver, I wish you a big kia kaha from the bottom of my beaver.

CHRISTchurch!

2011-09-06T21:43:00.001+12:00

Don't need to write much about this. If you're not familiar with Christchurch it won't mean much. If you are it will.


Cashel Mall

Blue Feelers

2011-08-30T21:11:00.002+12:00

It's been over a month since my last post. I'm sure you've all been thinking I must have got famous and had no time to blog due to endless drunken drug fuelled sausage fry ups with Kate Winslet at Richard Branson's house, but thankfully nothing could be further from the truth. The only jet-setting I've been doing is crossing the Tasman Sea many times to travel around New Zealand screaming at Feelers posters. Here I am screaming at one in New Plymouth.


FEEEEEEEEEELEEEEERRRSS!

Their new album is called Hope Nature Forgives but clearly nature is still angry with them and punishing us with hurricanes, earthquakes and lightning strikes on Richard Branson's mother. I was all ready to flop out my fire sprinkler to pisstreat their poster but my good friend Cal, who kindly captured my primal scream, said I shouldn't in case some of my revenge urine ended up splashing her jacket which I'm wearing because it was bloody freezing and I didn't have a nice warm jacket and she had two. To be honest the jacket looked much better on me that it did on Cal so if she is a true friend she will give it to me. She already gave me two pairs of her jeans so must have finally realised all her clothes look better on me. If you go here (NSFW) you will see me in her yoga outfit and I look pretty pretty.

I think for my next post I will listen to the entire new Feelers album naked and type my responses in a stream of conscious tourette's so look out for that one.

Here are some more photos from the last 37 days...

New Plymouth is in Taranaki where family violence is NOT OK! It IS OK! everywhere else in New Zealand though, especially in households that own one or more FEELERS! albums.

Another thing that is NOT OK! is JETSTAR!


JETSTAAAAAAAARRRRR!

I was on the top flight to Wellington...JQ286, aka FA-Q286. Look when we were originally scheduled to leave. Look when we were scheduled to board! Look at the current time! Not a word of an explanation or apology from Jetstar, just a big FA-Q to the 286 saps who had saved $20 they were now wishing they could spend on razor blades, Hennessy and Feelers albums. The only good thing about flying Jetstar is that you don't have to suffer through Air New Zealand's hilarious inflight safety briefing video. Still, it could have been worse. At least when we finally got to Wellington I wasn't the owner of this suitcase...


JETSTAAAAAAAARRRRR!

It snowed in Christchurch. That was The Feelers fault. I was cold. That was Cal's fault.

Where's my jacket CAAAAAAAL?!

Here's a meal I cooked with the cat looking on enviously in the background.

I was so excited about eating it I forgot to chew my steak properly and spent the next three hours hunched over the toilet tickling my soft palate to bring it all back up again. I can't blame anyone else for that except my spasming gullet.

Here's a photo of an abandoned vacuum cleaner at the steps of Collingwood train station that looks exactly like the vacuum cleaner I abandoned in Auckland. For a second I thought it was my vacuum cleaner that had followed me to my new home like a cat that likes to suck things but it wasn't. I felt a bit sorry for it until I realised I hated that vacuum cleaner and it sucked almost as much as The Feelers. I blogged about it here.

Right, one last photo to give you a feel for some of the entertainment I was involved in providing. This one was taken at Doug & Dot's Motel and Spa/Laundry in Blenheim.

Great stuff!

This has been a bit of a bitchy negative blog so I'm going to finish by providing a link to a young man who I firmly believe to be the next BIG THING! in NZ MUSIC! His name is PattyBoy and to my shame I'd never heard of him until my friend and director Heroic Faun Number 3 sent me an email this afternoon. If you only click on one link in all my posts make it this one! The backing dancers in 'Buzzy' are worth the price of admission alone and anyone who can make autotune sound out of tune in the seminal dance anthem 'Disco Erection' deserves to be noticed by a wider audience. He's even got skinnier whiter legs than mine. O for awesome!

Leek and You Will Find

2011-07-22T20:46:00.001+12:00

I was already in a mood last night before the creme fraiche pushed me over the edge. Reluctant to face another two hour stint tomorrow without access to the Koru Lounge I sent a cheeky request to Air NZ asking for a free pass based on the fact I'm flying heaps with them at the moment, I've blogged about their lounge twice and I always coil my headphones beautifully using the over-under method before leaving the aircraft.

They said it may take up to 72 hours to respond but it took Roberta less than an hour to shoot me down.

I know this has come out unreadably small but if I make it bigger it gets too wide and slips underneath my 21 members. All you really need to know is Roberta told me to take a flying leap and if I wanted access to the Koru Lounge in Melbourne I could pay $40 in Christchurch which only goes to prove she didn't even read my cheeky request properly. I shall take my revenge tomorrow by ordering at least four red wines on the flight and pissing in the aisle Jetstar styles.

To recover from the disappointment I decided to cook my meal of the moment, Jamie Oliver's Grilled Fillet Steak with the Creamiest White Beans & Leeks. I know Jamie is very busy stopping the world from getting fat but you'd think he'd have come up with a better name for this dish. I would have called Meaty Leeks, or Creamy Meaty Leeks, or My Meat's Bean Leekin' or Show Us Your Knob (of Butter). I went to Coles because I want to cook like a Masterchef cooks but it seems nobody on Masterchef wants to cook with leeks because they didn't have any. How can a supermarket claim to be super or a market when it doesn't have any bloody leeks! Everyone loves leeks! They're long and succulent and Welsh like Tom Jones.


Tom Jones about to take a leek.

I bet they have loads of leeks in the Koru Lounge. That's probably why there were none left at Coles. I walked to Woolworths which is much bigger than Coles and sure to have leeks even though Masterchefs never shop there. Sure enough there were leeks for Africa and butter beans, (which New World in Bishopdale Christchurch do NOT have at ALL....unless you're willing to buy four cans of Four Bean mix and pick out the butter beans...assuming that the butter beans make up a quarter of each can which is a big call, so you'd better buy five cans just in case), but everything turned to custard when it came to the creme fraiche.

Creme fraiche is never easy to find because nobody knows what it is. Do you look in the creme aisle or the fraiche aisle? Nobody knows. I think creme fraiche is French for fresh cream but it's not fresh it's sour and I don't like asking anyone where it is because I never know if I'm saying it correctly. I'm pretty certain your creme should rhyme with phlegm but should your fraiche rhyme with fresh or creche? I wandered around for a good 15 minutes muttering and blustering and banging into people with my basket of butter beans before pouncing on a hapless Woolworths employee stacking spuds.

'Excuse me, do you know where the creme fraiche is?' (I rhymed it with fresh this time.)
'I don't think we have any. It's one of those things we sometimes have for six months and then we don't.'

WTF?? Is there a season for creme fraiche? Do the creme fraiche cows dry up for six months? Is there a French fraiche cartel called OFEC that ruthlessly controls supply to drive up prices? He told me it's usually in the cream section but I knew it wasn't because I'd already screamed at the cream three times. I followed him and he couldn't find any either but told me to wait because his fresh produce supervisor could confirm the absence of creme fraiche once and for all. Then I saw this.

That's right....there was no creme fraiche!

Except for the one in my BASKET!

Hollllaaaaaaaaaaaa!

I had nabbed the last fraiche in Australia. It had been hiding at the back behind the cooking cream and now it was mine. I could see an old woman near death looking enviously at my creme fraiche and I thought about licking it and offering it to her to see if she'd take it but instead just slapped her in the face with my pack of 25 peel and seel envelopes. Wooly boy returned to confirm there was definitely no creme fraiche and I let him finish before producing the evidence to shame him for life. The look of utter bewilderment on his face was priceless. I think I could have pulled Ving Rhames out of my bumhole and he would have looked less surprised. Here's a photo of me at home full of the joys of creme fraiche.

Here's a photo of Jamie Oliver's Leeky Meat Bean Cream.

And you won't find that in the Koru Lounge.

Harry Potter and the Half-Arsed Wand

2011-07-14T14:44:00.000+12:00

Here's a photo from the World premiere of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2 in London.

Here's a photo from the New Zealand premiere of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2 in Christchurch.

Here's a photo of two girls attending the New Zealand premiere after an encounter with the two people in the previous photo.

The press would have you believe that those girls were visibly upset due to the franchise that shaped most of their lives coming to an end but as shown by recent revelations in the U.K, the press cannot be trusted and spend all their time listening to your phone messages or pretending to be Hugh Grant on the blower.

The spend on the NZ premiere was equivalent to Emma Watson's boob tape budget which is probably why myself and Cared Jorbin (not his real name), were hired to be Lucius Malfoy and Severus Snape. I think we did a pretty good job with limited resources and Cared even kindly fashioned me a wand by snapping a bit of dowel he found in the Hoyts Riccarton storage room in half.

Not that the wand saw the light of day much. I ended up being the ticket gatherer at the end of the black carpet with both hands cupping a bowl for people to pop their tickets in. My splintery wand stayed firmly down my pants. My plosive repartee went like this...

'Welcome. Have you seen P......OTTER?'
'P...UT your ticket in my P......OTIONS P.....OT!'
'Join Slytherin.'
And repeat 299 times.

I admit my Potter knowledge was severusly limited (hilarious!). All I could remember was that Alan Rickman liked to scream Potter often and spit on his Ps as all classically trained RADA thesps are trained to do. The obligatory Shortland Street stars were also in attendance and to my horror some moron with a camera insisted I and the other actors have our photos taken with them. How the mighty had fallen. Many years ago when my career was hovering between rock bottom and the glass ceiling I was a star on Shortland Street for three episodes and here's a photo to prove it.

Now I was reduced to being a glorified usher with a bit of wood down his pants. I had the hump big-time and pulled as much of my black wig over my face to preserve via anonymity what was left of my dignity. I also had the hump because I really wanted to be Hermione Grainger and wasn't allowed to. I even spent minutes preparing a photo to prove I could pull it off...

...to no avail.