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!"

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.

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.

• Ever watched Underbelly? I haven’t, but Underbelly fans might know this guy:

George Freeman was a “colourful racing identity” in Sydney. He was an organised crime man – drug dealing, illegal casinos and gambling, prostitution rings, may or may not have been involved in the odd murder or two.

He’s also my Dad’s uncle. 

Oh, how we LOL’d at our links with organised crime when the press reported Peter O’Brien would portray him in controversial Aussie TV drama Underbelly. I watched an episode at a friend’s place once.

“That’s my great-uncle!” I said.

He didn’t believe me.

• Dad finally figured out how to use the internet a few years ago and is fascinated by family tree websites. He recently discovered that the first person in his family to come to Australia was a convict from Scotland. Convicts back in the day were commonly imprisoned for petty crimes like nicking a piece of bread. My parents thought the same about Dad’s ancestor. But no! Turns out he killed someone. So the solution was to take him to Australia. Oh dear. Sorry, Australia.

• By now you might be getting a terrible impression of my father, what with being related to these dreadful criminals and all. Nah. Not only is my Dad a pretty nice guy, but the only time he ever nearly got arrested was for doing something awesome. While walking home from a footy match with some friends, some yob harassed his friend from Mauritius.

“Eat that, you black bastard!” said the horrid shithead, grabbing the Mauritian man’s hot dog and throwing it into the dirt.

Outraged at this most disgusting racism, Dad punched him. They landed on someone’s car. The owner of the car wanted to charge him for the damage, but Dad was let off. I really like that story. Although I don’t condone violence, I admire Dad for standing up against racism for his friend.

•  Over on Mum’s side of the family, another uncle of ours was also involved in the horse racing game in Sydney. I don’t know much of the details, except for giggling over trunks full of money and his wife spending it on a brand new kitchen! And thus, my family’s obsession with home renovations was born…

• This is a sad one. Mum’s great-grandmother was institutionalised because she had menopausal depression. By the time she felt okay again, her stupid doctors decided that she couldn’t return to society because she had been institutionalised for too long. Which was bullshit. Mum’s great-grandmother was the first woman in our family to go to university and became very wealthy. Sadly, she lost most of her money to the state after being institutionalised. Really makes you appreciate how far we’ve come in treating mental health and women, doesn’t it? (I am the second university-educated lady in the family. NO PRESSURE OR ANYTHING, GUYS.)

• Dad went to the first Sunbury Pop Festival (aka “Australia’s Woodstock”) in 1972. Mum constantly snuck behind the toilets at her strict private school to smoke cigarettes. Dad won a cross dressing competition at a pub for his ingenious use of a coconut bra. Mum constantly snuck into nightclubs while underage. My aunt (Mum’s sister) fondly recalls falling down a double-decker bus in London in her underpants after too many cocktails on a Contiki Tour. My uncle once owned a rather suss panel van (it was the 70s, you figure out the rest) that his mother knitted curtains for. Another uncle was imprisoned for refusing to go to the Vietnam War when he was drafted. In comparison, I’m a total square.

• My grandfather quietly rebelled against his strict Irish-Catholic upbringing by skipping Catholic school to ride the train around rural Victoria. Dad’s old aunts, who died when I was little, were glamourous Sydney babes who were often photographed on the street – the old school version of fashionistas getting posted all over fashion blogs, I guess. They also slogged it out in factories and pubs for the war effort. Like me, my bartending aunt in the 1940s dealt with unruly sorts by sharply telling them GTFO. Before they died, they ran small farms in rural NSW.

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.

Let’s get on with it.

Laneway

I scored a free ticket to Laneway because I am a cool cat about town who knows important people (jk, I am a creepy dork who is good at sucking up). To be honest, I didn’t know many of the bands. This isn’t usually a problem – I like checking out new bands. But it wasn’t fun music times. It was a horrible reminder about how dreadfully uncool I am and how no one will ever love me.

Crowd – 2/10

Like Children of the Corn.

Somber hipsters glared like I was publicly urinating on their vintage shoes every time I attempted to dance to plinking keyboards. I met up with some friends at the John Steel Singers set, who mentioned the same weird hostility of the crowd. A girl actually told them off for laughing! A boy with a popped collar stood in front of us with his arms folded for the entire set. He didn’t even move when they played Rainbow Kraut.

This song causes me to involuntarily wiggle my bottom in pure delight.

It was lucky that I was with my friends, who are a lot of fun and were doing a good job of distracting me from the sheer misery permeating the rest of the festival.

Not pictured: Grumpy hipsters.

I even made a new friend via another friend who was the drunkest, dancingest , most fun person there  and therefore provoked deathglares and bitchy whispers in response. Otherwise I would have been under the impression that dancing was ILLEGAL. Isn’t that the plot in Footloose? It put me in a really shit mood. And even though some of my friends like dreadful hipster music (see below), even they noticed the bizarre crowd. Hannah whispered, “I feel like I’m in trouble!”

Sure, it was nice that the festival wasn’t populated by shouty, pilled-up fuckheads looking for a FOIGHT, but is the opposite really that much better? Perhaps it’s my social anxiety kicking in, but feeling like I was being frequently judged on my behavior – which didn’t involve smacking people in the teeth or screaming incessantly – was incredibly unpleasant. You try enjoying yourself in a crowd of motionless, tight-jeansed, ever-frowning people who are very much pushing the point that they are Serious And Intelligent Music Fans, not bogan pleb peasants like everyone else BECAUSE YOU CAN ONLY BE ONE.

Toilets – 9/10

Quite good actually. Hilariously, many people lined up to use portaloos while there were plenty of vacant loos in the toilet block around the corner.

Organisation – 3/10

I got there early to see Danielle’s lovely band, Inland Sea. They started playing while I was in line. A security guard with a dodgy teenage ‘stache stood in front of us, glaring and smirking at a growing line of impatient music fans. I worried I wouldn’t see Inland Sea. I felt my toes burning in my boots.

“Why won’t they let us in?” whimpered a girl behind me.

Nobody told us. The stache’d guard smiled sadistically because he hates his life. Meanwhile, another girl in the line passed out from heat stroke.

Finally we were allowed in and I heard the glorious strains of Inland Sea. The stage they were playing at had no shade. I decided to get some H20. I approached the bar near the stage, only to have someone scream “WE’RE NOT OPEN YET” at me. Miserably, I wandered back into the searing heat and tried to concentrate on the angelic Danielle playing the cello, not the awkward beads of sweat dripping down my back. Gross.

Throughout the day, it became apparent that the stages at the RNA showgrounds were not meant for live bands. As Brady remarked at the Inner Sanctum stage, “These buildings are for sheep!” I guess seeing bands in a livestock shed and carpark looks pretty hip and alternative, but logistically it wasn’t a very smart move.

The sound mashed together in a sludgy hum. The lack of shade everywhere was pushing me to the verge of heatstroke and hysteria. This plus the weird crowd gave me a headache and put me in a shit mood for most of the day.

Music – 6/10

Inland Sea, as I mentioned earlier, were fantastic. Folk influences with cellos, ukuleles and pretty harmonies combined with sharp, upbeat pop made me smile, despite the throbbing headache I was getting from the heat. Local party band Toy Balloon had more cowbell. Rat vs. Possum wailed and thrashed dramatically. That sounds awful, but they were actually quite good. I counted 4 cute girls playing keyboard throughout the day.

Then it got boring. I am not into this experimental keyboard indie shit that was the main feature of this festival. Look, I’ve played piano and guitar for years and I can appreciate the musicianship, but all the echoing mumbles on a single guitar chord just sent me to sleep. I lasted three songs into Beach House’s set before I got bored and wandered off. I ached for a punk band or something, anything that crashed and exploded and made a mess, all over everyone’s crisp vintage shirts. Luckily, all the good stuff came later in the evening.

Gareth Liddiard played on a tiny stage to a tiny crowd – one wild-haired bluesman in ripped jeans (which I believe were genuinely ripped, not designed) and a guitar.

“Who needs drums anyway?” he joked. “What’s with all this disco shit?”

His cracked voice and thundering guitar chords stirred more within me than any of the other bands with Macbook beats. Haunting, heartbreaking songs shot through the cool dusk air and gave me goosebumps. Then Liddiard would suddenly come out with the most hilarious one liners like describing the floods as “It’s like Buddha diarrhoa’d all over you!”. Despite Liddiard’s music coming from a beautiful, dark dreamworld, his lack of pretension as a musician is what makes him a pleasure to watch live.

After him was the John Steel Singers, which as I mentioned before, are a lot of fun. I was amazed at how dynamic they sounded in the tiny stage in the alleyway, trombones and all.

After a brief discussion concluding that we’d rather be kicked in the crotch than see Yeasayer, we went to see Les Savy Fav. Tim Harrington painted himself silver, crowd-surfed and did a weird belly-roll thing on stage. It was loud! It was fun! Laura grabbed his balls! They were the highlight of the night. Then we got a photo with them!

Gotye’s beautiful, intricate songs were marred by poor sound. It’s a bit insulting to put one of the best musicians in Australia to play in a carpark too. A sampler provided big band riffs, which sounded okay but looked a bit boring live. Gotye seemed stressed by all this technical nonsense, which I can totally understand. I think everyone else did too so we all loudly sang along to Heart’s a Mess.

At some point we went inside to see Holy Fuck, a wild electronic outfit that thumped like speedy heartbeats, leaving everyone panting at the end.

The last band I saw was Cut Copy. And finally, EVERYBODY DANCED! Though I think all the grumpy hipsters were somewhere else because Cut Copy are like sooo mainstream because they smile and don’t make people want to kill themselves mid-chorus. Who cares! They were fun.

I may incur the wrath of many music fans by saying this, but I just didn’t understand the hype over bands like Deerhunter and PVT. Perhaps they sound better on CD than they do live. Either way, they bored me to tears. Or I just don’t get it because I’m an uncultured  bogan. Whatev.

Big Day Out

Crowd – 6/10

“Bloody Beetroots, WOOP WOOP!” squawked hyperactive tanned bros in singlets at no one in particular.  I wondered who they were here to see? 15-year-old festival n00bs pushed and talked screechily through sets and planted their denim-shorted arses on boys’ shoulders for prolonged periods of time. And again, I associated briefly with a friend’s friend’s mum. She was drunk and doing the worrying Mum thing about mobile phones and meeting up at stages. It wasn’t any less weird the second time around.

I got a little too close to the Big Day Out crowd when Rachel and I decided it’d be a neat idea to get into the D Barrier for Rammstein.

“LET US INNNN!” roared some drunk bros, charging into the closed gate and crushing me under someone’s sweaty armpit.

“Fuck this. BAIL!” I screamed at Rachel, but it was too late to get out now.

A dude stood behind me, jumping up and down, which is really disgusting and awkward when you’re squashed together. I think I’m pregnant now.

“That poor girl,” said an older fellow sympathetically.

“Are you alright?” asked his friend.

They pulled me out of the depths of armpit hell.

Finally, the guard let us charge through the gate. We made it!  And then we got chatting to the guys who helped me. They were cool, jokey stoner dudes who really liked Tool and protected us when the dickheads around us were getting out of control.

And that’s what Big Day Out is like every year. A lot of violent, drunk, rude morons, but a few friendly sorts with good festival etiquette that restore my faith in humanity.

Like this eyeball head guy.

Toilets –8/10

Thankfully, there were more portaloos than my first Big Day Out adventure. They also came with a disturbing water feature.

Sweaty from dancing, Shea and I went on search for the V tents that spray cool mists of water. We didn’t find a V tent, but we found a fountain shooting mist from the roof of… a block of portaloos.

“Aaaahh,” I sighed.

“I think it’s toilet water,” said Shea.

“AAAAAAAAAARGH!” I screamed.

Organisation – 3/10

Some of my friends’ phones didn’t work. Some did. Either way, I lost my boyfriend at one point and panicked quietly when I realised I was alone in a huge festival and couldn’t get through to his phone. In the end, he figured out one of his friend’s phones was able to call and we reunited. Still, it was very stressful. I wasn’t the only one in this dilemma; throughout the day I watched distressed punters wandering alone, frantically tapping on their phones, swearing, screaming, bursting into hysterical tears because they were lost forever. I suppose when Big Day Out first started there weren’t many people using mobile phones. It’s not the early 90s anymore, guys.

The timetable wasn’t too bad. There were minimal clashes. The only strange thing was putting The Vines on first, at 11am. The Vines, remember them? I do! I wanted to make out with Craig Nichols all over the place in high school. Years ago they headlined Big Day Out. I felt sorry for them, and wished they were on later instead of the Deftones or Birds of Tokyo or whatever vomitous band was playing on the main stage in the afternoon.

Music – 9/10

The first band I saw was Blonde on Blonde, drinking buddies of ours who are making it big on Triple J’s Unearthed. Their sexy stoner rock was a hit with the swooning crowd.

Third time seeing Washington. She was different this time at Big Day Out – her voice was raw and visceral, a desperate passionate edge to the lyrics  I only wanna dance with you in Rich Kids.

Thrusty backup dancer on the left.

I made my way over to Andrew W.K. The King of Partying was accompanied by a muscly backup dancer in a leotard who thrusted jubilantly at the crowd. Andrew W.K called for a circle pit – the happiest one I’ve ever seen. Imagine big hairy tattooed punk/metalhead dudes skipping around a tent with huge smiles on their faces.

I lasted ten minutes at Angus and Julia Stone before getting the shits because I couldn’t see anything. Why one the biggest musical acts in Australia at the moment were at such a tiny stage, I don’t know.

With Edward Sharpe swanning about in a white cloak with the rest of the Magnetic Zeroes, they reminded me of the Polyphonic Spree – feelgood hippie  vibes and lots of dancing.

Sia was up next, in a wacky outfit that looked like she was strapped to a tiny striped wall, which suited her quirky keyboard-pop.

We exited early to get involved in the Rammstein shitfight as mentioned above. The sweaty armpits were worth it. Wow! Sparks and fireworks and flames shot out at key moments as Rammstein blasted and roared. A man clad in a sequined body suit descended onto the stage and promptly exploded in a shower of fireworks. He reappeared on a treadmill and played keyboard.

Rammstein’s set finished with their comedy porn single Pussy, with Til Lindemann making furious wanking motions and ejaculating confetti all over the crowd. Brilliant!

I’m not the biggest Tool fan, but I can’t deny the massive effort gone into the spectacular audio/visual psychadelia before me.  It wasn’t your average rock show. It left the sunburnt, drunk and stoned crowd in stunned, sobering silence.

In the end, Rammstein and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes were my highlights of the day. Go figure.

Soundwave

Oh dear.

Crowd – 9/10

I quite like the Soundwave crowd. I wore my pirate hat again and met a few other pirates in the crowd. “Arrr!” we arr’d at each other.

And I thought, finally! For years I’ve wanted to be part of some kind of cool alternative subculture. I’ve been somewhere between a poseur punk, poseur goth, poseur hippie and poseur twee indie girl. Now I feel like I finally belong – as a pirate. Look, it makes so much sense. I am fond of wearing striped socks, bandanas and threatening to lop off your ex-boyfriend’s dick with a cutlass.  I have poor eyesight in one eye. I quite like parrots. Wow, I’m a pirate! If only I didn’t get seasick.

Organisataion – 2/10

THE WORST. The map was poor modernist avant garde artwork that had no resemblance to reality whatsoever. With eight stages (stage 5A and stage 5B? are you fo realz?) and a lineup ranging from “AWESOME!” to “I QUITE LIKE THEM!!” and “I don’t know who they are but wouldn’t mind checking them out”, there were timetable clashes out of the wazoo. Most bands played at EXACTLY the same time – Rob Zombie and Queens of the Stone Age clashing was most distressing.

Brady’s Laneway observation that the RNA Showgrounds are made for farm animals, not bands, became increasingly evident as sound issues throughout the day grated against my dehydrated nerves. Speaking of which, lack of shade in the sweaty heat was a problem again. Ridiculous. You’d think that in Brisbane – where it’s summer for 11 months of the year – it would occur to organizers that people generally don’t like standing in the sun in 110% humidity for hours and hours.

My phone not only died, but didn’t work at all, hence missing out on meeting up with heaps of my friends. As they say in an exotic European language, “Rubbisho!”

Toilets – 4/10

Plentiful, if you could find them. Most were hidden away beneath the obscure labyrinth of the RNA showgrounds stands. This caused me to miss most of Queens of the Stone Age performing No One Knows. Pissed in more ways than one.

Music – 8/10

The first band I wanted to see was Sum 41, mainly for nostalgia. Sometimes I miss being snotty wannabe-punk teenager. I don’t wanna waste my time, become another casualty of society! However, I forgot that they were much older now and had released a new album which sucked. Also, I’m not a 15-year-old wannabe-punk anymore, I’m an adult pirate. I walked out after 30 seconds.

The Murderdolls were awful.

Bullet for my Valentine gave it their all with ferocious, passionate energy. Unfortunately all I could hear were muffled, dull roars, even in front of the stage.

Slayer were on a frustratingly tiny stage. I peeked between shoulders to glimpse them while standing on a footpath on the back. People walked past me. One of the biggest metal bands in the world was playing in front of me yet I felt like I was obstructing a Fun Run.

As a tragic Guns ‘n Roses fan, I was mad keen to see Slash wield his instrument at me. Ho ho ho. He’s one of those guitarists like Jimi Hendrix that don’t just play guitar, but make it howl, squeal and moan orgasmically. And so he did. Unfortunately I hadn’t counted on his new band fucking up my enjoyment of my top-hatted guitar god. His singer crapped on and on between songs (are you ready to rock? I can’t hear you! I said, are you ready to rock? Still can’t hear you! etc). And then they started playing Sweet Child of Mine. It was awkward when I saw Guns ‘n Roses play it a few years ago – Axl sans Slash – and it was awkward again now, with Slash sans Axl. Familiarity with lashings of something that wasn’t quite right, like a very good tribute band.

Zack de la Rocha’s side project One Day as a Lion was surprisingly good. Zach was in the zone, willing to throw his entire body around the stage to make the point that he’s still raging in some form or another.

The oh-so-sexy Queens of the Stone Age were flawless. There were pretty lights and they sounded good and I don’t remember much else because I was tired and delirious and very much distracted by Josh Homme being a hot babe.

I was looking forward to seeing Iron Maiden because they’re very good and at least a million years old. Bruce Dickenson didn’t look like an 80s metal god in a beanie and baggy camo pants, but he sounded exactly the same as he does on my Rock in Rio album from the 80s while running madly around the stage. He was the life of the band, full of energy and making snappy puns about his own song titles (something about sharks swimming in QLD floodwaters and fear of the sharks) like a spritely rock ‘n roll leprechaun. Iron Maiden’s guitarists don’t sound like they’re playing guitar in a metal band – rather a string section in an orchestra. And that’s precisely why I like them – melodic, thoughtful music that happens to be lumped in the metal genre is much more appealing to me than angry dudes yelling “aaaaaaarghhh Satan!” in aggressive monotone.

Perhaps I was just tired but I found myself getting sleepy as a lower, lengthy songs dominated the set. I was annoyed at myself for my lack of rock and roll badassery by sitting on the ground, but there’s only so much lighter-in-the-air swaying you can do, right? All I really wanted was to hear Fear of the Dark. Then I did. And went home.

And now, for my final thought.

I now hate festivals. You pay a zillion dollars to see your favourite bands and end up getting jerked around all day. It’s like going into battle – plotting times and meeting places, fighting your way through the sweaty masses just to catch a glimpse of Julia Stone’s shoulder or to get an over-priced midstrength drink, scavenging for food that will least likely give you food poisoning, covered in mud, dehydration, exhaustion, the desire to accidentally-on-purpose gutpunch someone in a mosh or the terrorists will win. No wonder people smuggle drugs and beat the shit out of each other at these things. I was thinking of attending Splendour in the Grass to do some bar work. Then I saw that Coldplay are headlining and my hatred for festivals sank in just that little bit more.

My festival-a-thon was fun while it lasted. But in the end, a gig at a sticky music venue with a few of your favourite bands, friends that you can actually call and tickets under $100 is so much better value.  You get shade, free water and full-strength beer! And that’s all I need.

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.

Parklife

I’d never been to a dance or electronic music festival before. I wore the most colourful item of clothing I own – a black shirt with coloured squares on it. Disco.

Crowd – 8/10

A strange mix of steroid-pumping bogans and hipsters with poodle haircuts due to the lineup. But instead of a hipster vs. bogan showdown, everybody seemed caught up in the happy atmosphere, with the main objectives being to dance and have a great time. Lots of smiles and pleasantries. Saw a bunch of kids getting busted for smoking a joint by the cops, which I thought was unfair – surely  aggressive pillheads on the dancefloor are more of a safety risk than stoners sitting on the grass and giggling. But I’ll debate drug laws another time…

Toilets – 10/10

The Botanical Gardens do not host many public toilets. This was compensated with portaloos EVERYWHERE. Kenny must be rolling in his millions. It was great – I didn’t have to wait in line for too long at all.  I heard some great conversations in the short lines like “I bought my girlfriend $2000 breast implants. Then she dumped me.”

Organisation – 7/10

The Gardens are a great venue. There was plenty of space so everybody could move around freely. The stages were easy to find, with lots of signage so I didn’t get too lost. My only gripe was the Dandy Warhols playing the same time as Missy Elliot. Just because I like swaying along to indie bands doesn’t mean I don’t like krumping to hip hop either. And mobile reception was good for me – I was able to annoy everyone on Twitter just fine.

Music – 6/10

I started off the day bopping to Washington’s set full of sunshine and rainbows on a rainy morning.

I later traveled on over to the Riverstage to see the Midnight Juggernauts.

“He’s wearing a thing on his head,” observed my boyfriend.

There were actually a lot of people in the crowd wearing things on their heads.

The Midnight Juggernauts used trippy visuals to accompany their trippy electronica, and closed on an upbeat note with their dancefloor hit “Tombstone”.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I went to see Bloc Party’s Kele. I dig his single “Tenderoni” and thought the rest of his songs would be in that electro-house vein. They weren’t. He sounded like a more stripped-down, calmer version of Bloc Party. He even played a few Bloc Party songs. Oh well. He’s a great performer, full of cheeky energy, and Flux got everybody dancing.

The Dandy Warhols were the highlight of my day. They played all the favourites plus electronic experimentation and arty visuals in between songs.

It was totally unexpected from what I thought would be a straight rock set and a pleasant surprise.

I was confused throughout Groove Armada, and so was everybody else. The majority of their set were songs from their Black Light album which I hadn’t heard, plus a female vocalist I didn’t recognise.

An over-excited Parklifer screeched “Oh my god! Is that Karen O?”

I squinted at the tiny performer prancing about on stage. “Er… Megan Washington?” I guessed.

We were both hopelessly wrong, obviously. After a bit of Googling, I discovered that Groove Armada recruited a vocalist named SaintSaviour for their Black Light album. SaintSaviour was a fabulous entertainer in her own right, doing air-karate kicks in fabulous sequinned pants, with a voice that boomed and glittered across the Riverstage. Look me in the Eye Sister became a new favourite song for me.

But a lot of people just seemed disappointed that Groove Armada weren’t playing much of their older stuff.

“I just want to hear SuperStylin’,” grumbled my boyfriend, the dudes next to me, and pretty much everybody.

They played it at the very end to some Groove Armada fans who, at this point, were frustrated and seemed relieved to go home.

Overall, Parklife was far less obnoxious than I expected. The bands weren’t the most exciting ones I’d ever seen and I don’t really think it was worth how much I paid to go, but on the whole I had a pretty good day.

Score: 31/40

Woodford

Crowd – 9/10 Chilled out hippies, environmentalists and arty sorts. I didn’t expect it to be so family-friendly; there was an entire childrens’ area cordoned off at Woodfordia. It was nice having kids around – really added to Woodford’s fun, playful atmosphere. I wished my parents had taken me to Woodford as a kid! Speaking of parents though, I did encounter someone’s Mum who was doing the Mum thing in regards to organising things around the campsite while we were all in various states of inebriation. I found it really weird.

Toilets – 10/10 There were actual toilet blocks and I didn’t have to wait too long. Mind you, this wasn’t one of those festivals where everyone drinks booze and a billion bottles of water while dying of dehydration all day anyway.

Organisation – 10/10 Mind-blowingly fantastic, largely owing to the keen-as-mustard volunteers Woodford recruited. You’d think that a camping festival with masses of people and performers in every inch of the sprawling Woodfordia venue would be a logistical nightmare, but it wasn’t. The campsites were divided up in DIY roads (with cute names like TheOnly Way). There were shuttle buses, heaps of stalls, towing services on standby to help the zillions of people who got bogged and even a makeshift internet cafe and phone recharging station. What a great idea! Mobile phone coverage wasn’t too great – I missed out on meeting some friends because the messages took so long to send.

I only went to Woodford for one day and quickly got flustered running around to make sure I didn’t miss anything. But that’s not Woodford’s fault – I clearly have to stay for the week-long experience to see everything.

Music – 7/10

Folk music isn’t really my thing. I have a short attention span and I like music that goes BANG and BEEP and RARGH! But Woodford’s music wasn’t just sensitive acoustic performers – it was about a bit of everything. There was the bodacious Laneous and the Family Yah, a funky Brisbane band; indie-electro-reggae-whatever dudes Tin Can Radio; gypsy death rockers The Barons of Tang; wild futuristic bluesman That1Guy and snippets of Bollywood tunes, dancehall reggae, African drumming and musical comedians as I walked through the festival.

Score: 36/40

Sunset Sounds

This is a special one because I didn’t go as a sweaty, trashy festival punter – I went a as a PERFORMER. Look, I got an artist’s pass and everything.

A Sunset Sounds organiser contacted Danielle and I, highly impressed with our fantastic music taste that ranges from rockers SixFtHick to Bruce Springsteen to songs from the Muppets. Danielle called me early one morning to check my e-mail. Being a bit hungover and tired, I grumbled as I turned on my computer – to discover that we had been asked to DJ between bands at the festival! My head promptly exploded as I realised this would be the closest I’d get to fulfilling my high school dreams of being a rockstar.

In cute matching outfits and pigtails, Danielle and I brought our CD collections to the Gardens Stage. After a crash course in using a CDJ and fiddling around with the knobs (heh heh), we got stuck into it.

Aw yeah. We were there on business.

We shared a backstage area with Ash Grunwald, The Soft Pack, Peaches, Megan Washington and Paul Kelly. Welcome to the unfamiliar world of VIP.

Crowd – 10/10 Lovely. Boys waiting for Ash Grunwald blew kisses at us. Friends waved. It rained heavily through the whole festival (in fact, Brisbane flooded only a week later) but it didn’t stop some determined festival goers from gleefully jumping around in the huge puddle forming out the front of the stage. I looked out into the crowd occasionally to see a crowd of multicoloured rain ponchos jiggling around in the rain. I saw my friend Amy. She is pretty cool. As Danielle and I walked through the crowd, people stopped us to compliment our music choices which was very flattering.

Best photo I took all day. Amy in the middle with random people posing.

Toilets – 10/10 Nothing to complain about from me – we had our own private portaloos backstage.

Organisation – 5/10 *puts on screechy pop diva voice*  Omigod, they totally forgot our rider!

Seems like a lot of people backstage were left in the dark about who we were and what the hell we were doing there. It was embarrassing – we were nobodies who were technically entitled to the same stuff as the somebodies.

But this was all fixed by Ash Grunwald’s lovely band who let us have a few of their beers; a PR lady who was very apologetic and friendly about the whole situation; and the guys from The Soft Pack who didn’t mind that we nicked their bourbon and cheese, and ended up having friendly chats with us backstage.

We were also asked to DJ at the VIP after-party. Another instance of crossed wires led us to believe we were going to Alhambra’s famously trashy indie student night, Lambda Lambda Lambda. We ended up in the lush surroundings of the Port Office’s VIP floor, with very serious music industry types. I don’t want to go into details but basically, it was a disaster – left in the dark about what we were meant to be doing, being verbally abused as we tried to figure out how to disconnect the computer which unfortunately started playing Guy Sebastian, nobody danced and at this point I was pissed off and ready to pass out from exhaustion anyway.

Music – 8/10 We didn’t have time to check out the other acts at the festival, which was a bummer – I was really keen on seeing Joan Jett and the Klaxons. We mainly watched the acts on our stage.

Ash Grunwald started off the stage’s proceedings. Despite playing early on the at the festival, he drew a decent-sized crowd of fans.  A whole lotta sound came out of one dude with a guitar. His band was there for the rhythm side of things, but it was all Ash. An amazing performer and nice guy to boot.

The Soft Pack were a bunch of sweethearts from America who played fuzzy indie rock and become our backstage friends.

Peaches rolled up in a golf buggy to play a DJ set, which shat all over ours. Hers involved a coat made of boobs, a male stripper in a pink ballgown and five pairs of underpants and then feeding her backup dancers Moet & Chandon.

Male strippers and boob coats - something to think about for our next foray into DJing

To the crowd’s delight, she seamlessly transitioned from electro beats to jump onto her deck and sing her own song, Talk to Me. Then she played Slayer. What a champion. I went up to her backstage and was like, “Yo Peaches, that was a bangin’ set”. And she was like “Fo sho, you girls are pro. Wanna come on tour with me?”

No, not really. I smiled awkwardly and mumbled “hello” as she stalked off into her dressing room.

I dropped a stack of CDs on stage just before Megan Washington came on. The ARIA award-winner – who was about my height – rushed over to help me pick them up, before assuming the position behind her keyboard. The sun appropriately came out at sunset, just in time to shine on Washington’s twee indie pop.

Paul Kelly was on next. I’m not a huge fan, but I’m not one to dismiss his prowess as a performer. Sporting a sharp black suit and some sassy backup singers, the crowd sang along to classics like From Little Things Big Things Grow. It was a beautiful moment.

As for us?

Action shot of our mad DJing skillz. Taken by my mate Meg from the crowd.

I’d like to think we were awesome. For the record, the crowd loved the following:

• The Rolling Stones – Paint it Black
• B52s – Private Idaho
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Heads will Roll
• Outkast – Ms Jackson
• Bruce Springsteen – Dancing in the Dark
• LCD Soundsystem – Daft Punk is playing at my House
• Flight of the Conchords – Hurt Feelings

Our calculated song choices blasted through huge speakers on the side of the stage to not only the crowd in front of the stage, but festival goers lining up at the bar and to get food just a few metres away. People cheered, danced and sang along. It was a buzz, an electric warm fuzzy feeling that I’m sure would be multiplied tenfold if I was an actual performing musician. I’m a strong believer that DJs can make or break the mood so I was pretty nervous about the whole thing. It went well, and by that I mean it was freakin’ awesome.

Sunset Sounds is one of those new sort of indie festivals that aren’t really my kind of bag, where there’s that element of seriousness and frowning upon us terrible plebs who dare dance, drink and enjoy themselves in public in front of serious indie bands with serious songs about serious things. (See: Laneway Festival in Part 2). I’m glad we played at the stage we did – it seemed to attract a fun, friendly crowd.

But whinging aside, fuck it - Danielle and I DJd at a music festival. That’s worth more than an AWOL rider, serious indie kids and an awkward after-party.

Score: 33/40

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.

The first thing I saw after the flood party was my housemate Danny passed out in the hallway with a blue biro penis drawn on his face and a hollowed-out goon box on his head.

But everybody who had come to the party the night before – half of Brisbane, I estimated – was gone.

“Hmm,” I said, deciding to ponder this over the toilet.

After regurgitating a variety of mysterious liquids and crunchy bits of food I don’t recall eating, I threw off my dress and jumped in the shower.

Ahh, water.

Our housemate Erica heard about the floods first while she was sitting at her Macbook, flaming n00bz on the interwebs.

”Ohmigod!” she yelped, causing Danny and I to nearly shit ourselves in the middle of a thoughtful guitar-ukelele jam.

“What’s wrong? Did Steve Jobs die?” asked Danny.

“No! The ABC just tweeted that there’s a severe flood warning for tonight,” she gabbled, clicking nervously.

She pointed at a complicated map of Brisbane on the screen. “New Farm, West End and Milton are going to cop it. Maybe in the CBD as well. We might have to evacuate!”

I quickly assessed the situation, taking into account our rickety old New Farm Queenslander with the dodgy door that doesn’t lock properly.

“We’re alright,” I assured her. “We’re on top of a hill.”

“They’re saying the river’s going to rise to 12 metres. Police are already closing the roads and the electricity might go out…”

“Oh no!” interrupted Danny. “What if the bottle-o gets flooded?”

“Jesus Christ! We’ll run out of beer.”

“We should go to the bottle-o and stock up.”

Erica rolled her eyes and went back to Twittering.

I sat on the front verandah, lacing up my sneakers.

“Hello Gordon,” I said.

Gordon was a garden orb-weaving spider who lived between the verandah post and a tree. He paused in between wrapping up a dying fly caught in his web.

“We should get rid of that,” said Danny from the doorway.

Danny hated spiders ever since an unfortunate encounter with an arachnid in his first sharehouse.

While sitting on the toilet, as you do, Danny was gazing at the trippy spiral poster his stoner housemate had attached to the back of the door. His daydream was rudely interrupted by a hairy, hand-sized huntsman spider scampering across the door.

Danny was grateful to be on the toilet at such a frightening time. After a few excruciating minutes of horror, the spider finally crept onto the wall. Danny saw his chance for escape and hurled himself head-first into the door. It came crashing down with him, pants around ankles. His housemate laughed cruelly.

But I grew up in the outer suburbs with bushland just behind my back fence. I’m the kinda gal who would go out for a spot of golf – using cane toads as the ball. I’ve squashed numerous horrible creepy-crawlies with a well-aimed slap of a thong (that’s the shoe, folks). Including spiders.

“Gordon and I have an understanding,” I explained. “He never comes into uor home, so why should we destroy his?”

Danny shuddered. Gordon chewed thoughtfully on the fly.

–

There was panic in the air at Merthyr Village.

FLOOD TO HIT BRISBANE, shouted the Courier Mail from the newsagency stands.

We ran into friends on the way. Brisbane’s a small town like that and New Farm is even smaller; you can’t step out the door without bumping into friends, relatives, workmates, uni friends, old housemates, 4ZZZ announcers, that dude who always sings Creedence Clearwater Revival songs on karaoke night at the Brunswick Hotel, minor celebrities, etc.

By the time we got to the front of the line in the bottle-o, word had quickly spread that our house would be safe and full of alcohol.

As we elbowed our way through the masses, beer cartons on shoulders, a group of leather-jacketed boys (and one girl) emerged from a tiny old car.

“Hey, it’s The Rotting Teeth!” said Danny.

The Rotting Teeth were a local indie rock band that played at the sort of dingy, sticky pubs Danny and I drank at. We got talking to them during a particularly trashy indie club night. They were all quite friendly, but intimidatingly attractive and super cool. They’d just won Triple J’s Unearthed.

“Hi,” I said coolly.

“Oh, hey,” said Gunther the guitarist, brushing his long black fringe away from his bright blue eyes.

I forgot to speak for a few seconds.

“You guys going to be alright during the flood?” asked Johnny, the rogueishly handsome singer.

“Yeah, we’re on a hill,” replied Danny.

“We’re having a bit of a flood party tonight,” I blurted out.

Davey the drummer looked startled.

I regained my composure. “So, like, you guys are welcome to come over.”

“Sounds good,” piped up Celia, the cute keyboardist.

She smiled at Danny, who blushed and went into a coughing fit.

“Seeya,” drawled Gunther, and turned around to inspect the avocados at the fruit shop.

–

The last thing I remember from the flood party was holding a pillow over my head and groaning after going to bed. I vaguely remember shouting something about too much beer and madness.

Somebody wearing rainbow suspenders rocked up to DJ, completed with decks and lights. A bunch of guys took over the barbecue and cooked sausages for everybody. A fight broke out over who got to be the Scotty Dog in a drunken game of Monopoly. A girl fell asleep in the backyard under a palm frond. A couple aired their domestic issues in the front yard. The Rotting Teeth never made it.

But nobody was there now.  Even the girl sleeping in the backyard had pissed off.

“Where is everybody?” I wondered out loud, surveying the mess.

And what a mess it was. Shattered beer bottles. Ripped bits of clothing. Half-eaten sausages and Monopoly pieces strewn all over the loungeroom. Erica’s laptop was sitting on the lounge. There was a webpage open.

QUEENSLAND POLICE ADVISE BRISBANE RESIDENTS TO EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

There were no other details, except for the addresses of evacuation centres. They were all out of town, at least an hour away. Nausea that had nothing to do with my hangover made my head spin. Something was wrong.

There was blood on the keyboard.

And then I saw it. I was too shocked and confused to scream.

Bigger than Gordon. Bigger than Danny’s huntsman friend. Oh no, this spider was the size of a kiddie pool, with great big hairy legs the size of pool noodles and sitting on the couch.

It was watching Dr Phil and eating a sausage.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” I heard Danny mumble sleepily from the hallway.

“Don’t come out!” I warned.

“Why?”

“Please, please, please stay cool. But there’s a spider bigger than you in the loungeroom.

“Haha, very funny.”

Danny wandered in, pulling the goon box off his head.

The commercials came on the TV. The spider stared at him.

“We need to get out of here,” I said.

“Yes,” whispered Danny, putting the goon box back on.

We ran for the front door. It wasn’t much better outside.

A hairy leg emerged from a window next door. A bulbous body sat atop a streetlight. A family with Mummy and Daddy spiders with their three baby spiders sat on a roof.

“Fucking Australia!” I cursed. “Why are all the animals here so poisonous and unfriendly and monstrous?”

I watched cute, furry possum dart across a telephone pole wire. Its journey ended abruptly in the waiting legs of a plasma TV-sized huntsman spider.

“God!”

Nobody else was around. Just spiders the size of Shetland ponies. Even Gordon had left his web.

Danny was frantically calling the police. “What’s going on? … uh huh… right… okay. Thanks.”

He hung up, shaking.

“So, the river peaked at 4am this morning,” he said. “It got mixed up with chemical waste near Pinkenba. Spiders trying to get to dry land ingested the chemicals which… uh… reacted badly. They are extremely dangerous and have developed a thirst for blood. The army is being called in to destroy them. Excuse me for a second.”

Danny leaned over the side of the verandah and vomited.

“We can’t stay here,” I said. “This is spider country!”

“How will we get out?” screamed Danny. “They’re not going to move aside for us, are they?”

I hadn’t felt this much pressure since that time I smuggled weed into Big Day Out. Thinking quick, I ran back into the house, ignoring the giant mutant spider in the loungeroom (which was now getting stuck into Jerry Springer).

I emerged from the kitchen a few minutes later with five cans of Mortein strapped to my belt.

“That’s not going to do anything!”

“It might.”

I cautiously tiptoed down the stairs. A huge golden orb spider sat on the hedge in our front yard, eating a pigeon.

“Eat this!” I sprayed the Mortein into its many eyeballs.

It flung pigeon entrails at me angrily.

“Gross!”

Throwing the remains of the pigeon away, the spider jumped off the hedge and scuttled towards me.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh!” I dashed back up the stairs.

The spider followed me. If spiders could talk, this one would be cackling maniacally with bloodlust. Danny vomited again.

This was way too stressful. I needed a cigarette.

Wait.

“Spray when I say ‘go’,” I said, thrusting the spray can into Danny’s hands

I held my lighter in front of the nozzle. The spider was less than a metre away now. Danny’s hands shook.

“GO!”

The spider fell backwards down the stairs as the flames scorched its head. It landed on its back, lifeless and smouldering.

“Quick!” I said, motioning for Danny to follow me down the street.

We didn’t speak. We just ran and blasted every eight-legged beast in our path until we reached the bottom of the street – which was cut off by putrid, brown floodwaters.

Smoking spider carcasses lay behind us.

“Now what?” Danny groaned.

I heard a faint whirring, splashing sound.

“Oh…!”

It was The Rotting Teeth, looking as cool as ever in a little boat with skulls painted on it.

“Hey,” said Gunther.

Pigeon entrails were sliding through my hair. My housemate had a dick drawn on his face and was still wearing a goon box on his head.

“Hi,” I said, brushing off the pigeon entrails in what I hoped was a cool and trendy manner.

“Need a lift?” asked Johnny.

“Yes!” yelped Danny.

We jumped into the back of the boat and sped through New Farm. Black Hawk helicopters circled the skies. Davey the drummer pointed silently towards the CBD. They were blasting gunfire at the biggest spider out of all of them, which was sprawled across the top of the Storey Bridge.

“Everybody left town when that thing appeared this morning,” explained Gunther.

Except for us. I decided not to tell him it was because I’d consumed my own body weight in beer and was in no state to be awake, much less to escape giant bloodthirsty spiders.

“So how did you get out?” asked Johnny.

Danny held up the Mortein can like a trophy. I flicked my lighter.

“Wow,” said Gunther.

“Cool!” squealed Celia.

We passed a group of spiders in New Farm Park. One of them was waving its legs angrily.

“Gordon?” I whispered, as we sped down the street.

I swear he turned around and waved a leg at me.

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

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.

A few years ago, I was bored of being the checkout chick at the newsagency and decided to get a real proper office job, like a real proper grown up.

I found a job ad looking for an “appointment setter”. I envisioned the role would involve me sitting in a nice, air-conditioned office, pencilling in luncheons between the business elite. Much nicer than dealing with cranky housewives and their losing Crossword scratch-it tickets and bratty offspring drooling chocolate all over the magazine stands.

It seemed like a glorious challenge to me, as I regarded the professional office world with warped perceptions and anxiety. What can I talk about? Am I allowed to have a personality? Will my creative endeavours to write cynical literature such as this blog post be frowned upon? Will I have to start listening to Coldplay and go to the gym? Will I be cast aside, categorised with drunks, junkies and vagrants?

To my surprise, I was invited to an interview.

I assembled my office best which consisted of a white blouse, a faded black pencil skirt and the sorts of shoes middle-aged women buy from the chemist. No idea why I owned them – preparation for situations such as these, I guess. I figured I looked boring enough for the job.

It was confusing from the start. I made my way to an address in Dutton Park, thinking this was the site of my prospective new workplace. It was a Centre for the Deaf, which proved to be pretty damn ironic later on.

A bored-looking woman ushered me into a spare office. I thought she was the boss. She wasn’t – she was from a recruitment agency, which was odd because I hadn’t applied through one. The interview was unmemorable – it consisted of bullshit questions and my own bullshit answers. The only thing I clearly remember was the interviewer repeatedly mentioning “There’ll be no cold calling.”

Er, of course there won’t be. People are ringing me to book appointments… right?

My bullshit must have been particularly fragrant that day because I scored a trial shift. It was all happening! Soon I’d be able to do all those important and exciting things office people do, like fill the pages of one-day-a-page leather bound diaries with fancy gold pens.

I caught a bus to the second mysterious address at West End on a  Monday morning and approached the cold, marble altar of reception just a bit before 8 o’clock

“Oh, over there,” the receptionist said, pointing to a little grey office around the corner.

I spotted two other nervous-looking girls and assumed they were on the same ride to entry-level office stardom.

Then the boss arrived. My anxieties about professionalism vanished. She wore a short-sleeved shirt with several Chinese symbols tattooed on her arms and spoke in a piercing nasal bark.

I diligently paid attention as she told us about the company and gave us a tour of the office. I may have even taken notes. It sounded impressive – a telecommunications wholesaler for small businesses, providing phones, modems and faxes (we’re talking pre-Facebook days here, people). And we’d get paid a bonus if we booked more than a certain number of appointments.

Uhhh. What?

But suddenly it was morning tea time. I wandered over to a nearby cafe and nibbled on a brownie. It was delicious and the highlight of that ridiculous day. When I came back to the office, one of the girls seemed distressed. I asked if she was okay. She pointed to a man bustling around the office.

“He said there was a bit of fluff on me, and brushed his hand down my arse!” she whispered, horrified.

Yuck! I made a mental note to stay away from that guy and ignore any practical advice he may give on my personal grooming.

The second part of the training began. We were shown how to access the company e-mail account and how to use the headsets on the phones.

“We’ve got phone numbers of all the small businesses in town on this database,” said the boss. “And here is your script…”

Script? Phone number database? I still wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but went along with it anyway.

“Hello, this is Ellie from Com-u-Tel*. Are you interested in our telecommunications package for your small business? We’ve got a great deal on phones!”

After a few bemused replies of “Sorry, we’re not interested” it finally hit me. I was telemarketing!

I put down the headset and mumbled something about going for a cigarette, even though I don’t smoke.

Telemarketing! They sure fooled me. Appointment setting, eh? No cold calling? Damn you to hell, you lying recruitment agency she-demon! And using telephones to sell telephones – genius in its pure evil. It was a scam! They knew it was a scam! I had been scammed! I’d become what my parents hated, especially around dinnertime! But it was a high-paying job in an office, away from the dings and beeps of cash registers. The only little obstacle was that this job revolved around annoying the shit out of people and selling off bits of my soul until there’d be nothing left of me but a cyborg in a pencil skirt. Oh god! My head spun as ethics and self-loathing exploded in my brain.

I rang my then-boyfriend in tears.

“It’s… it’s… telemarketing!” I sobbed.

He was as horrified as I was, like I had somehow got roped into being a dung-shovelling child murderer.

“Well, do you want to be a telemarketer?” he asked.

“No!”

“You should quit.”

Sound advice.

I marched back into the office, watching the other girls sigh despondently at another rejection.

This could be your life! screamed a voice in my head which suspiciously sounded like Mike Munroe presenting an evil version of This is Your Life.

“Sorry,” I said to the boss. “This isn’t for me.”

I looked at the clock as I walked out. 12pm. For 4 confusing hours, I had been a telemarketer without even knowing it.

Epilogue

I sucked it up and got a job at another newsagency, before moving into the glamorous world of barwenching. I am actually looking for a “real job” nowadays. Something writing or communications-related (not telecommunications though). So if you’re impressed by my tale of telemarketing terror (or just feel sorry for me) and want me to write for you, let me know.

* Name changed

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.