President of Dork Club: What I learned from organising my first gig

Essence of Dork Club

It all began from a list of incredibly silly creative ideas.

“Wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a nightclub full people dressed in socks and thongs, dancing to Weird Al Yankovich?” I blurted out on Facebook.

“LOL,” said my friends politely.

I repeated the same idea to Bel, the music manager at The Basement 243.

“That’s an awesome idea!” she said. “How about October 1st?”

“Yeah sure. Wait, what?”

And suddenly I was organising my very first gig. I had my doubts. The last party I threw, my 21st, ended in tears because half of the party attendees were on a variety of unpleasant drugs and scaring the shit out of everyone in a nice South Bank cocktail bar. I remedied the situation by leaving them to roll around on the ground and run around the Parklands screaming, but I haven’t thrown a party since.

After months of stress, dodgy poster designs and a billion e-mails, Dork Club had an awesome turnout – about 100 people. It was much better than what I expected (ie. five of my good friends showing up and awkwardly leaving after ten minutes).

If you put on a Dork Club, they will come.

I learned a lot of things about event management from this little gig. I’d like to share them with you:

• When all else fails, ask your friends to play music. Mind you, I have friends who happen to be excellent musicians, which certainly helps. I felt like a cop out at first but now that I think about it, a lot of other promoters I know do the same thing. Friendship is a good way to get things organised without all the pressure of being awkward around cool musos you don’t know.

• Social media is a godsend for the budget-conscious promoter. It’s especially effective when your target market is people who love using the interwebs. And never underestimate the power of word of mouth.

• Put your posters up in areas where there are other posters. Many of the ones I put up at traffic light crossings were taken down, but the ones with other posters stayed up. I remember a time when the Valley was wallpapered with posters. Alas, the Fun Police prefer fresh paint and blank walls.  Think about it – someone out there has a job involving tearing down posters. “Information about an upcoming fun event? NOT ON MY WATCH.”

• The whole thing is WAY more work than you’d think, so don’t do it all by yourself. I could’ve done with a few extra hands on board but wanted to be Super Modern Independent Woman Who Can Do it All. I ended up yelling obscenities at my computer and dying of exhaustion most of the time.

• If you’re in south-east Queensland, I strongly suggest getting involved with 4ZZZ if you do anything in entertainment or arts. They helped me a lot with advertising and gave me some volunteers to be there on the night. Plus, heaps of announcers and volunteers came to party themselves. The 4ZZZ family is so supportive and full of the most wonderful people ever.

• I didn’t spam anybody’s Facebook inbox or harass anyone to attend. Take note, crazypants event and venue managers who have successfully turned me off attending their events with their insane messages every day leading up to it.  (“My event is on Friday. FRIDAY. THIS FRIDAY. It’s at 8 o’clock and if you are not on time I WILL STAB YOU. Are you coming??!!!! I don’t care if you think it’s fun or not because all the proceeds go to some kinda charity thing and support the music scene! DO YOU WANT TO MAKE ALL THE STARVING  CHILDREN/MUSICIANS CRY?! WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA?! If you don’t come I’ll send you endless passive aggressive messages afterwards. THAT WILL SHOW YOU WHAT A HORRIBLE PERSON YOU ARE.”) Put it out there and keep people informed, but don’t get up in their grill.

• Don’t be put off by people making rude comments on your event page. Focus your energies on the people who ARE attending. Those guys are awesome!

• Don’t get too upset when people you don’t like show up. Just smile politely, go talk to your friends, and laugh evilly because they basically just gave you their money.

• Pay your entertainment. I’m surprised that some of the Dork Club entertainers were surprised to get paid at all. What are you doing, other promoters?! Anyway, musicians like getting paid. Every dollar goes towards all those important musician expenses, like funky guitar effects pedals and cool haircuts.

• Be open-minded and never think that any idea might be too silly, because it might turn out to be awesome. The bartenders on the night decided, on a whim, to make $7 flirtinis which went down a treat with Mighty Boosh fans and anyone who likes tasty, cheap alcohol (ie. everyone). An attendee arrived wearing a homemade helmet made of glitter, which was excitedly passed around the club. Dorks gleefully fought over violent games of Hungry Hungry Hippos. I sold loads of raffle tickets for a Dork Club prize pack consisting of a dodgy sci-fi novel, Mad Magazine from 1993, a Bart Simpson figurine and a container in the shape of a hamburger. Danny from The Watermelons danced with the crowd wearing a rubber mask during one of their songs. He asked for permission beforehand. Why would I say no?

The chorus to this tune went "You've got a horrible, horrible, scarred face!"

I was pretty chuffed with my efforts. Nothing went horribly wrong, everyone had a good time and I even made a bit of money. Most importantly, I proved to myself that my organisational skills aren’t as bad as I thought and that I can throw a damn good party. Hope you can all make it to Dork Club #2!

Busy doing EVERYTHING, aka Gratuitous Plug for all my Projects

The Bedroom Philosopher – New Media
I work in New Media
I’m pretty damned important
Don’t ask me to explain what I do…

It’s bizarre to think that a bit over a year ago, I was moaning about being unemployed and sinking into murky ennui. I remember those days – endless hours playing free MMORPGs, getting inebriated to stave off the boredom, going without eating because going grocery shopping seemed like too much effort.

Nowadays I am very, very busy.
I am so busy that I’ve had to say, “Sorry, I can’t make it to that thing because I’m too busy.”
I’m so busy that I have a touchscreen phone and use it for things other than playing Angry Birds.
I’m so busy I downloaded a To-Do List app on my phone.
I’m so busy I’ve actually received e-mails that aren’t spam or all those e-mail newsletters I subscribed to ages ago because I liked getting e-mail. NOW I GET TOO MANY.
I’m so busy I actually need one of those day-per-page diaries because I would fill up all the pages.
I’m so busy I may soon get one of those hands free devices that all the busy people have, who look like they’re insane and negotiating business deals with imaginary people but in reality they’re too busy to even hold a phone to their ear. That shit takes time! Don’t you know how busy they are?!

So what the eff have I been doing that’s so busy? LET ME TELL YOU:

- Studying at SAE and doing assignments such as mixing rubbish covers of U2 songs.

- Organising my very first gig. DORK CLUB at The Basement 243, a party for the dorky and dorky at heart. It’s this Saturday. You should come, because where else are you going to wear your bedazzled bumbag?

Did you know that I used to want to be a graphic designer? LOL.

- Writing indie reviews for Rave Magazine again. I’m in this week’s issue.

- Although I’m not doing a 4ZZZ show anymore, I still help out from time to time. I recently interviewed Peter Freestone, who had the extremely amazing job of being Freddie Mercury’s personal assistant. It was aired on Not Quit Enough Rope this morning and you can have a listen on my Audio page.

- Forcing myself to exercise AND calm down by purchasing a bicycle and trying out yoga. I started writing a blog post about that, but I haven’t finished it because I’ve been TOO BUSY.

- Taking care of my pet mice. Look, they are very cute.

They look very adorable here, sharing a lettuce leaf, but I assure you the big one on the right is actually stealing it from the little one on the left. Mischievous little creatures.

I still don’t have an excellent job, piles of money or my own fragrance line (Smellie, for Women who Are Sweaty and Gross) yet, but it’s pretty good having stuff to do anyway.

Now I must go get party supplies for DORK CLUB and purchase pants to wear to yoga. Toodle-oo.

How I met your mother (and killed someone): Fun Family Facts

As I have grown older, my family has been more lax with exposing information about themselves. When I was little, my family seemed like this dreadfully uptight collective authority figure who never did anything more scandalous than a quiet fart and whose lives revolved around kitchen renovations.

Wrong.

My family is technically my adopted family, but I am too lazy to say “adopted family” all the time and it doesn’t sound right to me anyway.

Like most Anglo-Saxon Australians, they’re a hodgepodge of European descent. With a colourful past. Dun dun DUNNNN!

Crime, fights, hippies, babes and general awesomeness under the cut.

The Stages of Tiredness (with internet memes for visual assistance)

Have you ever been tired? Of course you have, you’re not a bloody cyborg. There are many ways people become tired. Too many extreme sports during the day, for example. Realising your 5000-word research essay on Micronesian politics is due the next day and staying up all night to do it. Insomnia brought on by unexpected nervous energy and your brain just does not shut up, going over everything from paying your bills tomorrow to a existential crisis over your primary purpose in life. In my case, working strange hours where I don’t get to sleep until the sun comes up – or on some days, waking up at that time.

There are many ways people respond to tiredness. The most obvious method is, of course, going to sleep. But sometimes this isn’t practical, like if you’re at work and you work happens to involve surgically removing malfunctioning testicles. Can’t nip off for a nap while someone’s testicle is going to explode, can you? Some people combat tiredness with caffeine like energy drinks, coffee and speed, but none of these things do much for physical exhaustion. And sometimes you’re already asleep, but rudely awoken by a loud game of Chainsaws and Lawnmowers next door and can’t go back to sleep.

If you’re unfortunate enough to be in a situation where you’re collapsing with exhaustion but are unable to go to sleep for some reason, you may find yourself going through the following stages:

STAGE 1: SLEEPY
- Looking forward to sitting down, laying down and any kind of physical position other than standing or moving
- When presented with the option, would rather take a lift or escalator than the stairs.
- If asked to go jogging, will say “no thank you.”

STAGE 2: IRRITABLE
- Irrationally frustrated at minor things eg. Slow walkers, waiting in a line, buses late by two minutes, someone looking at you funny, anyone sitting next to you on the train, your favourite flavor of nutrient water isn’t available at the shop
- Loud, sudden noises make you twitch involuntarily
- If asked to jogging, will say “piss off!”

STAGE 3: ANGRY

- The things that mildly frustrated you before are now legitimate reasons for a violent disemboweling
- Loud noises are physically grating on your nerves . For example, the sound of the train screeching to a halt at the station makes you start drafting a strongly-worded letter of complaint in your head like, “Dear QR, Stop making your trains so goddamn loud. Seriously, what the fuck is up with that shit. Nothing needs to be that loud, ever. Are you doing this on purpose? Fuck you, FUCK YOU. Love Ellie.”
- If asked to go jogging, will kick asker in the teeth (but not really because you have no energy to do so)

STAGE 4: EMOTIONAL
- All these frustrations are now digging a well of despair into your psyche.
- You question why humanity is so cruel, the nature of society itself that doesn’t provide beds on every corner or a two hour nap break during work, or even having to go into work or do anything at all instead of glorious, beautiful sleep. Tears burble down the bags under your eyes, which now resemble withered plums
- You’re over sensitive. Someone looks at you strangely and you instantly decide it’s because you’re hideously ugly and no one will ever love you and they’re so mean and everything in the world is terrible, definitely not the possibility that they might actually be checking out how hot you are or you’re standing in front of the train station timetable. You watch an episode of Ellen where she gives an unemployed single mother of five $10,000 and a new car and weep at this display of the beauty of humanity.
- If asked to go jogging, will burst into tears.

STAGE 5: INSANE
- You have lost your abilities to communicate normally. You feel yourself physically interpreting words in your first language because your vocabulary is now limited to “hmm”, “grunt” and “noooooooooooo”. You can no longer form a coherant sentence and hope people understand what you’re talking about if you bark key words at them.
- The little annoying things now provoke strange reactions. A dude with a rat tail yells “nice tits” and you respond with “suck my balls Johnny Dickface!”
- If asked to go jogging, will laugh manically and start quacking like a duck

STAGE 6: SEMI-CONSCIOUS
- You have mastered the ability to sleep with your eyes open. Congratulations!
- You may become prone to hallucinations and acid flashbacks where you’re like “woooaaah the path is actually a pile of stones floating in a river”.
- You’re so tired you feel like throwing up
- If someone asks you to go jogging, you stare at them and try to make them go away… with your mind.

STAGE 7: HAPPY
- You’re asleep
- You are having lovely dreams about eating cake, rainbows, flying, being surrounded by puppies, making out with hot babes, etc
- Everything is okay again
- If asked to go jogging, you don’t reply. Because you’re asleep.

I should add that these findings are based on my experiences as a lady. Males I have asked about this say that they skip straight from sleepy to insane. Your mileage may vary.

Festival’d Out! Part 2: Laneway, Big Day Out, Soundwave

Sorry this has taken so long to post – the last few weeks have been a whirlwind of Boring, Time-Consuming Life Stuff like house-hunting, job-hunting, working more, collapsing from exhaustion, etc. Now all of that’s settled down I promise to blog a bit more. You can also check out bite-sized rubbish I post on the internet on my tumblr.

Let’s get on with it.

Festival’d Out! Part 1: Parklife, Woodford, Sunset Sounds

I’ve been lucky enough to attend a hell of a lot of festivals in the last six months: Parklife, Woodford, Sunset Sounds, Laneway, Big Day Out and Soundwave. As much as I love music, I have had quite enough of the damn things and am over mud, expensive mid-strength drinks and exhaustion.

I’ve also made this blog look a lot prettier and was inspired to write a huge festival review.

Anyway, I’m critiquing these festivals based on the following:

Crowd – Irritating morons wanting to FOIGHT or rad sorts full of peace and love?

Toilets – This is a photo I took when I first went to Big Day Out in 2005:

Welcome to your bladder's hell

So I’m judging the toilet situation based on this.

Organisation – Timetable clashes? Could I decipher the map? Was I able to get around the festival with ease? Was there notoriously awful mobile phone coverage?

Music - Obviously. Did the bands suck or did they rock my rainbow socks? Was the sound handled by a pro or a stupid monkey?

Right. Let’s get started.

Attack of the Giant Mutant Spiders from New Farm!

An average Australian spider

I wrote this silly tale to enter in the 100 Stories for Queensland Anthology. I had issues with the word limit at the last minute and didn’t end up submitting. I didn’t want it to go to waste though – I haven’t written a short story for ages. So here it is in its full glory. Critique more than welcome.

Inspired by my friend Jordan calling me to kill a giant spider in his house, Erik’s photos of a golden orb weaver and other arachnid sightings after the floods.

Writing cover letters make my brain hurt

Dear good ol’ buddy ol’ pal   total babe   Employer,

I am responding to your ad looking for some shit-kicker to do stuff at your workplace and get paid for it.

I am heaps smart because I went to uni and didn’t fail anything because all my subjects were arty and piss-easy. 

I’m a nice dude, with some nice dreams. See these ice cubes, see these ice creams?

I have inoffensive body odour and nice hair.

Please hire me.

love and kisses,

Ellie

Lies! Deceit! Telemarketing!

There are many mundane and horrid jobs about there. Burger flipping at Maccas. Cleaning the toilets in the Valley. Thrusting leaflets onto the unsuspecting public at shopping centres. Serving beverages to wine snobs and drunkards.

And telemarketing.

Danny, a 4ZZZ announcer, briefly held a job as a telemarketer. He now works in a call centre where he appears to receive endless calls about where to find the nearest brothel. Hannah, a journalism and media student, is on the job hunt at the moment (hire her! she’s brilliant!) and was somewhat insulted to be offered a job in telesales.

Telesales is one of the many buzzwords that employers use to make telemarketing sound more attractive, like “outbound call centre work”. Just when you think you’ve landed yourself a nice corporate office job, BAM! It’s telemarketing.

I was a telemarketer once. It happened purely by accident and the vile trickery I mentioned above.

Sinny-Mah: Terrible Movies I’ve seen lately

One of my simple pleasures in life is to curl up in bed with my boyfriend, eat takeaway food and watch movies sourced from movie rental bargain bins, secondhand shops or crudely burned onto a disc. It’s like movie lucky dip. Sometimes you get something really good like red snakes. Sometimes you get something really gross like pineapple chunks.

I feel that the sheer awfulness of the movies I’ve watched lately warrant a blog post.

Silent Hill
When I played Silent Hill on my mate’s Playstation when I was 14, I played the part where you wander around a school at night, the bell constantly ringing, lit only by your little torch in the darkness and weird little creatures attacking your leg. It was creepy, unsettling and genuine nightmare fuel.

Silent Hill the movie has lame monsters, cheesy hysterical screaming and poorly-acted flashback scenes.

It felt like when I went to see The Human Centipede: I had high expectations to soil myself in sheer terror, and ended up soiling myself with laughter at the stupidity of it all.

**spoiler**
I was hoping it would get better but then a crazy Christian cultist appeared and started screaming, “Burn the witch! BURN HERRR!” Unfortunately, this reminded me of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and any shred of fear I had from watching this movie (not much) was gone.

It begins as a quest for Rose’s daughter, Sharon (Jodelle Ferland), develops into a ghost-town mystery, devolves into a preposterous cautionary tale about witchcraft and religious fundamentalism, and wraps up like the outrageously overwrought fantasy of a French movie nerd obsessed with horror (the director Christophe Gans) who has been given obscene amounts of money to adapt a video game. Which is, in fact, exactly what it is.
Nathan Lee from the New York Times

The Mist
“What’s that?”
“The mist.”
Roll title credits. Subtle.

Freak weather brings slimy aliens with a fondness for disembowelment to a small rural American town. A religious nutcase screams with even more melodramatic insanity than the religious nutcase in the previous review. Giant spider monsters kill people with acidic spiderwebs.
“This reminds me of Dreamcatcher,” I said.
Dreamcatcher is a Stephen King movie set in a small rural American town under alien invasion. Except instead of zooming in on UFOs or indeed blowing in with a hurricane, the aliens emerge from people’s bowels. Which isn’t terrifying so much as it is hilarious to people with an immature sense of humour (ie. me).
Anyway, I got a strong sense of deja vu in this film.

The religious nutcase reminded me a character who stalks and kidnaps her favourite author.
The spider monsters reminded me of a story about an evil clown.

So I cackled like the banshee of pop culture when “based on a novel by Stephen King” popped up on the ending credits. Is it a good thing or a bad thing when you’re a veteran author or director and you start referencing your own culturally-influential work? I thought this when I saw the Quentin Tarantino-produced Hell Ride. Film nerds and arts students lap up this kind of thing. I’ve written far too many analytical essays in my life and simply find it wanky.

The movie was written and directed by Frank Darabont, whose “The Shawshank Redemption” is currently No. 2 on IMDb’s all-time best movies list, and who also made “The Green Mile.” Both were based on Stephen King’s work, but I think he picked the wrong story this time.
Roger Ebert

August Rush
Think of the outrageous music movies Tenacious D’s Pick of Destiny and Get Him to the Greek. Now imagine both those movies except coated with a thin film of Serious Business and a side of cheese.

Where do I start with August Rush? How about with the opening line?

Listen. Can you hear it? The music. I can hear it everywhere. In the wind… in the air… in the light. It’s all around us. All you have to do is open yourself up. All you have to do… is listen.

Coming from the lips of a Hayley Joel-Osmont-ish kid, I thought this line would sound better as a delightfully creepy monologue in a horror movie if you just replaced “music” with something else, like “screaming cries of the undead”. Unfortunately, this movie does not contain flesh-eating zombies, but orphans and Robin Williams playing an annoying asshole in a hat. Look, who needs characters with individual personalities when you can just lump them with a bunch of over-emotional, contrived, whimsical lines that don’t really make much sense but will look good when their clips are edited for the Oscar nomination? Which they weren’t, by the way.

As well as unrealistic dialogue (no offence if you always talk like a theatrical performance poet), am I really supposed to believe this kid is such a prodigy that he goes from not knowing what musical notes are to furiously writing an orchestra within, oh, 30 seconds? Even Mozart would be like “bitch, please”.

A movie about music should have good music. Duh. One of the saving graces of this movie is that the music is quite good; Keri Russell’s character, Lila, plays a mean cello. Unfortunately, her lover in the movie wrecks it. Louis, played by Jonathon Rhys Meyers, is a “rockstar”. I mentioned Get Him to the Greek before, right? His band sounds strikingly similar to Infant Sorrow, except remember this movie is Serious Business. So the cheesy pop-rock that would make U2 cringe is not a joke. There’s also an excruciating scene where Louis meets Lila on a rooftopand serenades her with Van Morrison’s “Moondance”. CUE CONCEIVING BABIES. I don’t understand why this kind of thing is considered romantic. If some dude I just met started bleating lame songs at me while I was chilling out on the roof, I’d run.

The cherry on the top of this diabetes-inducing trifle of a movie? A kid yelling “Run August, run!” Because quoting from a good movie means your movie is a good movie. That’s science.

In the end, the only way my boyfriend and I could watch this movie was to close our eyes and pretend August was Jack Black’s character in the Pick of Destiny. Try it. Especially the part where August sings “Fur Elise”.

Oscar Wilde once famously observed of Charles Dickens’ “The Old Curiosity Shop,” “It would require a heart of stone not to laugh at the death of Little Nell.” Modern moviegoers may find themselves guiltily stifling giggles at the melodramatic “August Rush,” a would-be tearjerker about a gifted musical prodigy (Freddie Highmore) searching for the parents who abandoned him. While many films require a suspension of disbelief, “August Rush” asks viewers to terminate their disbelief without severance and have security escort it from the building.
Alonso Duralde on MSNBC

Note: I am not in any position to be criticising films and you probably shouldn’t pay attention to my bitchy opinions. Ever.