A Justification of Picking One's Nose

One of the great, treasured joys in my life is a good, thorough pick of the nose. I know it's gross or whatever, but it's also one of those minute social taboos where you know people can see it, but you're not shitting on a park bench or anything, so people just pretend not to notice. I like it that way, and I know most of you are squirming right now a going, “Dude, really? We get it, your nose whatever, but do you really have to talk about it?” Well no I guess not, but what the fuck else am I going to talk about?

I got in to London today at 7am after a presumably long bus ride that was rendered short and blissful by the second-last 10mg valium tablet of the pack of 12 given to me by my friend Kay the week I left Melbourne. I arrived at Victoria Bus Station, and walked for about 80 minutes with all my bags and sweat and organs and shit to my hostel just North of Park Lane and Hyde Park (CLANG NAMEDROP!!) and after hanging out for a while applying for barista jobs online I decided to go for a walk past Marylebone Station (CLANG!!) towards Fleet Street (CLANG!!!) before I transformed into a little toy figurine of an Artillery and... okay sorry I'll stop.

I'm a little over-excited I think... or maybe I'm not, I don't know. I don't feel the same sense of awe and wonder that I remember feeling when I first got to Melbourne, although maybe I didn't feel it back then either, and I'm just romanticising the past as often is so tempting.

“It would be nice to entertain the idea that I, Aidan Jones, am a trailblazing nomad beating down a path never before seen or even considered in the history of human experience... but that would also be completely fucking retarded.”
That's what I wrote last time, day one, July 11th 2012. This time I feel a bit more sure of myself, I know what I'm doing a little better, and I'm trying not to write so grandiose...ly(?).

Oh jesus I just realized I just quoted myself. Wow. Fuck. Sorry. Oh my god... anyway. Bah.

It would be nice to say that it feels like love at first sight with London, I mean that would fit the narrative perfectly: “young man travels across globe with twenty pounds and a towel, falls in love with city, wins life, dies surrounded by loved ones aged 85¼”. I don't think it quite is though, I just walked around today trying to feel that sense of wonder and awe, trying to tease it out of myself, but instead just feeling sort of content. I think it may be a case of, “let's definitely keep seeing each other”, rather than love at first sight this time. I will keep putting that phrase in here though, because even if I don't feel it, it's bound to turn up a few hits to my blog from popular Google searches. “'Love at first sight'? Oh I LOVE love!” LOLOLOL. While we're at it: “does he really like me?”; “why does it hurt when I pee?”; “how to make moonshine”. It's a numbers game guys, let's be honest with ourselves.

I meandered through the centre of the city today, my hostel being on the Western side and an interview for a barista job being on the East. The place just keeps going, I walked for almost two hours in a straight line and the rolling buildings four, five, six stories high just kept coming and coming and coming. I waited out the front of the cafe for like half an hour and did some writing, then went inside, made some coffees, chatted to the guy and got a final trial shift for Tuesday. I left feeling great.

Also someone from Melbourne said something really nice to me over Facebook chat, and so as I walked down more streets surrounded by looming stone giants my smiling turned to heel-clicks and I broke out into a weird, celebratory jog/skip for a few metres every block or so. It sounds dumb here, and I'm sure it looks dumb in person too, but I have fun guys, I really do. Promise.

I had a rest underneath this statue of some guy called Charles James Fox who I've never heard of and is more famous that I'll ever be, and noticed that my left foot hurt from all the walking – three hours. My body felt weird from the coffee – double shot: unnecessary. I was cold and hot at the same time, and couldn't figure out whether to leave my jacket on or off, or draped around my shoulders, or whether I should just throw it over a tree branch and abandon it forever. Charles James Fox eh? Good on ya, I wonder if old Foxey ever went for a bit of the Ye Olde Nose-Pick? Because that's what I did sitting at the foot of his grand statue there, looking stately, erected MDCCCXVI. I sat there for at least a whole minute, picking away, and that was the highlight of my first day in London.

If you're reading this and feel in any way connected to the things I've just said, then please walk down the street and click your own heels, or say something nice to a friend you love and admire, and if you see someone picking their nose call out to them, wave, and then give them a thumbs up. Because it's nice, and they've earned it.

Peace, Taco.

Okay Okay Okay! I'm Leaving Already

This last week has been probably the best week of my life.

From going out to a horrible bar at 1:30am on a Thursday, after having two great gigs that night, and meeting someone amazing, to reliving old memories with old friends from Adelaide in a loud nightclub on Friday, driving around until 10am on Saturday, and passing out in my room surrounded by friends. Saturday night, the best comedy night I've been to out of a solid pool of around 500 or so in my last two years in Melbourne – a night all about ME(?!) no less, oh the gratuitous ego-stroking. My parents were there, and everyone DESTROYED and I was reminded how lucky I am to have found the community of people I have in Melbourne and the friends that surround me. Rob putting a smoking log from the fire inside his jacket, me selling Mark Bozworth's washing powder to the highest bidder in a final, deliciously sweet act of revenge. Getting a frankly terrible portrait made of me by a girl in a bar who “[doesn't] smoke, but I do smoke weed, because I'm an artist.” and showing it to people in the line at KFC at 4am. Sleeping on my floor again. Waking up with a numb shoulder and fear in my heart, realizing that everything was almost finished.

Listening to a history podcast about a Manson-like siege in a German village in the 1530s while lying sprawled on my rug-covered-with-fitted-sheet and waiting for 3:30am. Watching Germany win the World Cup. Getting drunk again, and again, and again, and again, and thinking my body was about to give up as I danced on the beer-soaked floor of the German club until 10am Monday morning – someone painted their flag on my face, and for a few hours I didn't care, I just wanted to be part of the celebrations.

In theory, I hate conga lines.

Seeing my fam – Mum, Dad, and Brother – off with a throbbing hangover and jittery from the shakes as we sipped coffee and prepared our goodbyes. Giving my Mum a Hug.

I found the best fucking laundromat in Melbourne that night, it has a cafe and phone chargers and a communal laptop and WiFi and Blackadder playing on the TV and a back yard smoking area and you take washing powder for a dollar a scoop, and you put the dollar because no one is looking and you don't want to feel like a bad person. I had a great conversation with my ex-girlfriend/divorced wife Rachel, and she is doing great. I had a solemn goodbye to Jess, who is having a hard time right now, but I know she's gonna pick it up, cos she a strong, modern lady. And boy, that chica can SING!

My last gig was on Tuesday night, my last night in Melbourne, and I had a good one. And then Oliver Clarke CRUSHED the room and closed by singing a frankly moving love song to a sandwich and I could not stop laughing. Then we went to Noodle Kingdom and acted out noisilly, and a busker played No Woman No Cry on the street so I sang along with him, and the homeless man next to us didn't quite know the words. Some guy in the toilets at Exford put his phone in his mouth to do up his fly, and I commented on the brilliance of his move, because I'm always scared if I try it the phone will fall out, to which he replied, “yeah man, I've got a pretty deep mouth.”

Of course you do...

This last week has been the best week of my life.

Now I'm sitting here on my bedroom floor, looking at the writing on the walls that Luka, Blake and I painted ourselves nine months ago, scrawled on a handful of drunken nights, messages to myself from these last frantic days in Melbourne. I'm sure I can be forgiven for feeling very, strangely scared. Out into the abyss again... just when it was all getting to feel comfortable.

Thankyou to everyone who has been a part of my life for the last two years, it's been amazing. Don't worry, I'm leaving already, I promise I'll stop talking about it soon.

And now I will quote from one of the great poets of our time, the inimitable Prodigy, of Mobb Deep: “To all my niggas: get the money, frontin' niggas: get deceased.”

Sorry for cursing.

Peace, Taco.

Love Note to No One

I open the door to my room which has no lock and barely any need for a latch, either by kicking it mid-stride or flinging my right arm out, fist balled up, to strike it. There was supposed to be a lock put on the door just after I moved in but I can never be bothered stressing Mick, the owner of the pub, to do it. Four months here and still nothing missing, every day fills me with unearned confidence in my neighbours. There's a fire alarm on the roof that beeps intermittently because it is low on battery; it has been doing that since I got here and even though Mick gave me a new battery to put in it so it wouldn't beep, I haven't done shit.

Sometimes the kick or punch I deliver to the door doesn't open it all the way, these times are due to the latch being caught on what is left of it's hole in the door frame. On these days I hip-and-shoulder the door open once I am face-to-face with it, and inevitably I make my way inside. It's night time usually. My shoes are the first to come off after I sit down in the chair I found on the side of the road in Glandore, Adelaide, the suburb where I grew up before leaving in July, 2012. 5037. Taking my shoes off isn't a huge priority, but it always feels nice, and the time it takes usually coincides with the time it takes my computer to turn on or at least come off of sleep mode after I sit down. The chair creaks – I have never had it checked for disease. I wiggle my toes after removing my socks and making a quick calculation concerning whether they are clean enough to wear tomorrow. Yes or no: on any day this is a fifty-fifty decision.

Internet, depending on whether or not I have it at the moment. Sometimes I'm in luck and the router downstairs is turned on so I can sneakily piggyback off of the pub's internet (I'm not supposed to be, but the password is c37636e6 so how could I not?). Often the router is turned off though, and in those cases I either use my phone as a router and stick to text-based websites, or stay off line and play some music. I take my pants off next, and then my shirt, and turn the music up a little as the air settles, the window was probably already open unless it's been raining but it's summer at the moment and it's been summer for months now. If I leave the door open a nice breeze flows through the window and cuts the stillness over my bed which has been drenched in sunlight all day. Over my chair and out, I leave a shoe on the floor to stop the door from slamming shut.

At some point I will lean back on my chair almost far enough so that it will fall over, but not quite, because I have pretty good balance and I trust myself, but when I pop back up I feel all the more tired, and ready for bed. I don't like sleeping with light on, and that includes a computer screen, but I do like having something to listen to that will lull me into my unconscious. I shut the door because I like to sleep naked. Plug my phone in, climb into bed, put my phone on the dresser, set an alarm for the morning – if I don't have work, seven hours from now is a good time to wake up. If my hair is tied up I take it down and put the hair-tie on my table, somewhere easy to find. Look around, one last time, flip my pillows over, flip them again, find two that combine their height to make something like a nice, comfortable head rest. Settle in. Kick the quilt off, pull it back, poke my feet out the end. Yawn. Open eyes close again, open, close, open, droopy. Feel my legs twitch a few times in a state of half awakedness. Awakening? Awa...kened...full... Questions questions... silent thoughts...

and then I think of you.

Maintain Maintain Maintain

FUCK! It really is such a struggle. Maintaining... keeping up with this blog. How does Herring do it... a post every day FOR OVER TEN YEARS!!? The man must be half insane. Half insane, and half of the most grounded, sane type of person that exists in our world.

I'm telling myself, now and for the next however many years, that the reason he's able to keep up that blog every day, is because he's forty-something years old and doesn't live the same lifestyle as me. But honestly, he's a comic too... I'm sure he knows about beers in the night and late afternoon hangovers piercing through the will to live... I'm sure he knows about the lack of motivation that comes in cycles coupled with thrilling, manic spurts of insane energy... I'm sure he knows about the creeping, questioning uncertainty, every day, every day, “do I really want to do this?” But he keeps going. Ten years, not a single chink in the armour.

Maybe I need to read more of his posts, maybe they aren't as emotionally involved as mine, I know that he tries to tell a story from the day before, rather than succumbing to the narcissistic urge to endlessly introspect – narcissistic, and also oh-so-tiring.

I just seem to run out of juice. What could I have written about yesterday that would have been worthwhile and maybe turned into a 600-word story? Well, I caught a cab home with SCumming – mine and Luka's new nickname for new comic Simon Cumming, although I personally prefer Scummers, we'll see how it goes – that was eventful. The cab, not the words in between the hyphens... GOOD GOD LOOK HOW I SIDETRACK MYSELF. There really is no hope.

I need to go to the toilet now, as is common with the minutes just after waking up... I had some wack dreams last night... dreams in which my brother owned a pistol and was arrested for shooting someone on a soccer pitch. I had to defend him from the investigations, led by Richie. I bought a phone from a service station and changed my voice to something else so that I could pretend to be someone with information – a witness or something. Real family shit. Insanity, my brother would never shoot anyone.

Dreams last night, dreams today, this world is an ever-evolving blur in front of my eyes.

Peace, Taco.

My Homework from 'A Brief Guide to World Domination'

Today I am in Adelaide, and like most days in Adelaide, I am spending this one at my parents' house doing nothing much and essentially waiting for something to happen. Is this what I want for myself? To wait? I don't know, that wasn't a rhetorical question.

Who do I want to be? I read something a while ago called 'A Brief Guide to World Domination' by some guy whatever who cares, which asked two questions that it said should be at the core of everything we do:

1. “What do you really want to get out of life?”
   
2. “What can you offer the world that no one else can?”
   

Tough stough... (just a little spelling joke there, before I start getting serious)

Okay, so number one. What do “I” want to get... out of... life... what do I want to get out of life? No holding back. Okay, what I want to get out of life, I think is... everything. No. Okay. I want to get everything that I want. I want to be able to have everything that I want at any given moment accessible to me as soon as possible. But what do I want? I think I want people to pay attention to, and like me. Pretty shallow huh...

I'm sure I can do better than that – the danger here though is trying to dress that fairly base desire just laid down there in careful rationalizations that make them look more altruistic... well I want the people that I care about to be happy. That makes me happy. But then, I do want their happiness to somehow involve me, like maybe I want people to be happy, BECAUSE of me. I want to make people happy. Yes. I don't want people to just be happy at random, I want to be responsible for peoples' happinesses – as many and as great as possible. That's right. Me! Taco!

That sounds realistically selfish while still being acceptable, doesn't it? The oft-quoted eulogism, “all he wanted to do was make people happy”, I feel can be translated to this selfish desire.

1. “What do you really want to get out of life?”
   “Well, Mr So-And-So Psychiatrist, I would like to be, through my own actions, personally responsible for as many peoples' happiness as possible. And it'd be nice if they knew about it too.”
   

Now what can I offer the world that no one else can? Fuck me, really? Ugh... okay... my blood? Fingerprints? This word - “Quertykoacquatlophyx”... ?

Stop being an idiot, idiot.

I honestly have no idea... okay, so currently, what I want to do with my life in the long term is I want to be a stand-up comedian. I guess that implies that I believe I have an unique point of view that no one else can offer the world. That doesn't really feel accurate though. Louis CK – arguably the best (Most original? Funniest? Most successful?) comedian in the world right now has quite a few AMAZING jokes about how if you're in your early twenties you are the most worthless kind of person and have nothing to offer the world. (“If you're twenty... okay... fine... we'll see.”) As degrading as that sounds, I can't help it from sounding pretty reasonable too. I have potential, but that's it.

But is that it? Potential? Eugh... Is the answer to question two that I have an unique potential, different from that of anyone else? I am now, being as I am at my wit's end with this question, going to attempt to unashamedly list what I perceive to be my positive attributes that I might better understand the nature of this disgusting 'potential' that is apparently so important to my happiness:

• I am good at communicating my thoughts
  
• I am driven and work hard
  
• I am generally likeable (queue sarcastic jeering)
  
• I am funny when given the opportunity ie. When I am sufficiently comfortable in a social situation
  
• I'm pretty good at mental arithmetic, and making lists
  

That's all, I think. I don't actually have any real tangible skills that have been cultivated or worked on, these are pretty much all either basic character traits, or things that I have developed over years interacting with people socially. But I guess the skill that I'm cultivating right now is stand-up comedy, which, for the uninitiated, is definitely a skill make no mistake.

So I guess that's it:

2. “What can you offer the world that no one else can?”
   “My potential, apparently, whatever that is.”
   

What is probably the most damning detail here though is that even after being so obviously affected by the two questions posed by 'A Brief Guide to World Domination', I couldn't be bothered remembering, or even looking up, the guy's name who wrote it to put in my blog. God damn it. I guess I'll have to reconcile myself with the fact that as endeavouring to bring happiness and fulfilment into other peoples' lives is an anonymous and largely thankless endeavour. But then WHERE DOES MY SELFISH PART GET TO COME IN??!

I guess, really, I only wanted to be famous.

Peace, Taco.


[if anyone wants to read the actual thing I'm referencing here:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/40787/worlddomination.pdf]

Impregnated With Wonder

I love thinking about the future. I just read an article about Japan's K Computer that, in August, took forty minutes to simulate one second of human brain activity. (http://io9.com/this-computer-took-40-minutes-to-simulate-one-second-of-1043288954) It wasn't actually organized to simulate human brain function, just the volume of processing power, or at least that's what I understand from the article. Fuck man, I love this shit.

Before I was reading this article, I was reading something else from Reddit about how the Curiosity Rover just found water molecules on Mars – the estimate now is that about two pints of liquid water in every cubic foot of Martian soil (fuck off with your dumb imperial measurements, NASA, why change it to stupid-metres for the press release?). (http://gizmodo.com/nasas-curiosity-rover-just-found-water-in-martian-soil-1403908591) Apparently a manned mission to Mars is still a long way off because the levels of cosmic radiation astronauts would be exposed to would give them an untenable risk of developing cancer, so they either need to develop better radiation shields, or make the journey faster. One commenter suggested hijacking an asteroid and building habitation inside it before propelling it as a makeshift spacecraft to Mars and disembarking there. Fuck yes, I love that shit.

One of my favourite Reddit stories is the one about the guy who played a game of Civilization II for over ten years, and go to a point reminiscent of the global political situation in Orwell's '1984' (I should get make a tattoo-tally on my ass for each time I reference that fucking book IT'S SO GOOD!). (http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/uxpil/ive_been_playing_the_same_game_of_civilization_ii/)In the game there were three civilizations vying for global dominance, stuck in a state of eternal war with extremely advanced technologies and democracy having failed. Scary, foreboding stuff. Civilization, as a simulation, may be flawed though, and we have no way or knowing whether that guy's game is a scary omen of things to come, or just a curiosity with no bearing on the real world. Well... we have no way, right now... (cue music – DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN)

Moore's Law states that “the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles roughly every 18-24 months. This means that processing power doubles in that time for a machine of the same size. This means that the K Computer capable in forty minutes of processing an amount of data equivalent to that processed by the human brain in one second, will be able to do the calculations of a human brain, in real-time, in roughly twenty-two years. Two human brains two years after that. Four two years after that... in sixty-six years, a computer capable of simulating the operation of eight and a half billion human brains in real time will be as large as the K Computer is now. That's assuming Moore's Law holds, which it probably won't according to the current theories. Growth may increase at an increasing rate, making the time even shorter. It could do that, or alternatively, the time span could be reduced, so it could simulate an entire human lifetime in the blink of an eye, or hundreds of thousands, or millions of human lifetimes...

So what does any of this wild posturing by a twenty-two year old comedian who dropped out of first-year university physics to 'study' goon in Adelaide actually mean? Well, what it means, is that whenever a computer exists that is powerful enough to simulate a human life in the blink of an eye and retain all of the information accumulated over that life for analysis, we essentially would have the data available to predict the future. Run simulations on the past. Recreate events, or see how events are going to play out.

Suddenly Sid Meier's 'Civilization II' becomes the ancestor of a real-life program that could be used to determine the trajectory of current world events, with every reasonably possible variable accounted for. World Peace talks taking a sour turn? Run the simulation, see where this chain of events is leading us. Nuclear War imminent? Run the simulation. Climate Change Sceptics still busy talking about how the entire solar system is heating up and 'historical variance' and bullshit, bullshit, unfounded, rhetorical bullshit? Run the simulation. Oh look, your house was swarmed with angry, starving climate-refugees and while you were busy taking a shit. Unlucky for that Mr Bolt, lucky for you, here in the real world, that it was just a simulation, now how about those solar panels?

AGH! There's no way of telling what the future will bring, I know that. I'm not banking on any of this happening, but it's so much fun to speculate, just for now, while we run around on errands and the world spins.

I've been listening to Pete Holmes' album this week, it's called 'Impregnated With Wonder'.

Peace, Taco.

Dream 002

 I just woke up from a dream that there was a giant storm that was going to be ravaging the world – the whole world – at some particular time, and so everyone had to go inside and weather it out, and it just so happened that in the ten minutes that the storm was happening (it was a dream, OKAY!) I was going to be MCing at Station 59. So the storm was forecast, and on TV there were images of buildings having already collapsed – for some reason I remember Ross from 'Friends' having had a bet with one of his architect friends about which buildings would stand and which would crumble... that sucks that in my dreams I watch friends.

I was on the tram just before the thing hit, and I was about to get off, but I left my jacket on the tram so I had to go back on, but then by the time I went back and got my jacket I couldn't get off he tram again, because the storm was about to start and no one was allowed to go outside. This part is confusing, because I remember being trapped inside the tram with everyone, but I also remember being in Station 59 MCing a show. During the actual storm I wasn't on stage, my friend Sean McGuiness was on stage. He doesn't do standup, but I've always said he has the kind of brain that spits out thoughts in ready-made jokes and would be perfect for it anyway – unconscious thoughts manifesting them in mid-cyclone comedy sets there.

As the storm hit and Sean did a set about how most people hadn't heard the real story behind why I have the nickname 'Taco', I watched out one of the windows in Station (as did the rest of the audience, Sean's set wasn't going great, although I seem to remember defending him against detractors and saying that actually I really do like his style of dark comedy) we saw the whole world moving by us in the wind like we were stationary and everything else was on one huge conveyor belt. There was no danger or effects inside, other than that the piece of paper that held my set list almost blew away so I had to rest a book on it and it was fine. Come on, 'My Dreams'... unrealistic.

I remember then that the wind stopped. I wanted to go on stage after Sean's set and make a quip about how actually, I do have material about how I got the nickname, 'Taco', and everyone has heard it. That's weird, because in real life, I definitely do NOT do material like that, for reasons I will not go into here. Also I remember the guy that was on next wouldn't tell me his name, and was dismissive of my comedic skills, he told me some stupid ten-word name and I was like, “you're a moron, no one's listening anyway, why are you unpacking some ridiculous tarpaulin to do comedy, you suck, shut up, you're goofy-looking”.

The last thing in my dream was everyone lining up along a rope for a picture; the rope was being held tight by someone out of frame and we were all holding onto it with our teeth to simulate being blown away, but our bodies were all facing the wrong way, and our hair was hanging down making it clear we weren't actually being blown to anywhere other than collective shame. I suggested we use a fan to simulate the correct hair position, and we all took a photo with the subtext, “I survived the Windy Storm Thingo”. Then I woke up.

Peace, Taco.

Paranoid Dream

I'm MCing at the Comic's Lounge tonight for the Young Guns show, I guess it's a kind of important gig because if I can get people watching then I'll hopefully be able to book a spot on a Monday or Wednesday night there, and move into some of the weekday/weekend gigs. I'm a little nervous about it, although nowhere near as nervous as I was for my last Spleen gig, but apparently still pretty nervous, because the whole thing just played out in my dream.

It was showtime and there weren't very many people there, maybe twenty or so, which is a pretty tiny crowd for the Lounge, even on Tuesday, but the show started anyway. It started with Brad Oakes giving me a very poor intro from the stage, and then me running from my spot at a table (why wasn't I ready backstage?) to behind the curtain, and then having to push through the curtains which had been stapled shut. I got out and my opening line was “that was done on purpose”, which got a bit of a laugh. Then I noticed that about six or seven kids in the front row were wearing purple shirts, and so I guessed correctly that they had come from school... they were so close to the front they literally had their chins resting on the stage. So now about a third of my audience were school kids, and they were WAY TOO CLOSE to the stage. The gig was not going well.

I went into my opening gear and it was going all right – not great, but all right – but the audience were moving around a lot, this should have been an indication to me that it was a dream. At one moment they were ten metres back from the stage, the next they were all crammed in on two tables to the far left with no other furniture in the whole massive room, then they were all lined up together with the school kids right next to the stage so that the only way I could make eye contact with them was to hang off the side of the stage and do my bits there. I was leading up to the main punchline of my opening 3min chunk when a bigger-than-expected clap of approval swept through the crowd and I turned around to see Brad Oakes standing on stage, introducing the first act. Apparently I had gone over time and the show needed to be kept moving. I was blowing it. HARD.

When I got back on stage to introduce the second and third acts it seemed as if the sound guy was trying to edge me out of my role by introducing them over the PA instead, also I didn't have a list of who was on, and the only act that I got to the mic in time to introduce ended up being different to what I had written down on my sheet, so that was fucked too. I went to the sound guy to get the running order, and while I was there another act came on without me. Then I lost the run sheet as soon as I had it, then I went back on stage pointlessly and saw the crowd had about quadrupled because a teen song-and-dance act were taking to the stage to close the first bracket and they had brought heaps of friends. They were singing weird harmonies and were very good. Something like Step Up meets X Factor, only people didn't hate it and throw fruit.

Brad Oakes left through the back door which led to conspicuously more steps than it actually does (clue. IT'S A DREAM DUDE!), and when the break came at the end of the first bracket, the lights went out and no one was left in the room. My dream ended about here, as I was resolving to do a better job with more material in the second bracket. I didn't even get a chance to redeem myself.

So yeah, that was my dream. Pretty shit, I know the gig's not going to go like that tonight... to be honest, MCing is pretty easy because even if you go a little poorly at the start, you get about fifteen chances to redeem yourself; one in between every act. It's going to be fine, as long as I get a good chunk of solid material in – I'll probably aim for the 7-8mins at the start of the second bracket – then I'll have something to point to when I talk to the guys that make the decisions about Monday/Wednesday spots and say, “that's what I'll do, now put me on motherfucker.”

Comedy huh... it's really really fun.

Peace, Taco.

Snapshot 13.08.29

I had a dream about Grace last night, but now I don't remember what it was about. No matter, I had a pretty decent gig last night too, after the pits of doom that spewed from my mind in the minutes after waking up late-afternoon (See: yesterday's post). I don't know why I was so foul at the world, but there seems to be something to it. Anyway, today's another day, and I already feel like it's been a win in more ways than one. The plan today is to read some more Mark Twain, and type a few pages of On The Road, which has lain dormant on the left-hand side of my table for a few weeks.

Yesterday felt like the first day of Spring – it wasn't, it's still winter for another three days. The weather was fine all day, and it would have been pretty easy to rock no jacket, just a t-shirt, from lunchtime til around sunset. Definitely what you want.

Also last night I made a shitty sandwich, borne of laziness: ham, picnic bacon, cheese, onion, garlic, sweet chilli sauce, mayo, hot sauce – it wasn't even a disappointment, because honestly, who ever expected that sandwich to go well? Well, me actually, in some crazed optimism-coma. Three kinds of sauce, no salad, not even red onion, that shit was white as the KKK and burnt my eyes when I bit into it. Eugh, welcome to the future.

So I've been thinking of moving out of Baker St. That's an interesting thing for me to think; for as long as I've been of legal age and allowed to go out and party, I've wanted to live in a house where the agenda is non-stop action. Drinking, drugs, music, party. Now that I've been here for a year though, I don't know, I mean I always intellectually knew that I didn't actually want this kind of lifestyle, but I have still enjoyed every second of it for the past year, it's only been in the last few weeks that it's suddenly begun to seem tired. But look at me, making it seem as if I've been living some high-octane amphetamine-circus for the last twelve months – I really haven't. I'm sure there are just as many examples of me packing it in early or sleeping through a kick-on since I've been living at this place, as there are of me taking the drugs all night and drinking the drinks into the next afternoon. I guess I just feel like it's the right thing to do now after a year

So now I'm looking, I guess, for a new place, although there's no huge rush... The Workers is an option, as long as the rent doesn't go up too far above $130 a week like Richie said it might do once something happens with management that I didn't quite understand/want to know about... eh.

Finally, I don't have a gig tonight, but now that I'm in a fairly good mood, with a decent amount of what feels like zen stored up in my psychic tank, I think I'm going to go out on the prowl for one tonight. Commedia St Kilda could be a good bet, or the Exford. I need to finish writing my show as well, and I promised a random group of people that I'd organize and run a pub crawl for them, with barely any guarantee that I can actually deliver on that promise, so I guess there's that to look into.

That's a pretty reasonable snapshot of my life right now. I guess that's what every single one of these blog entries is supposed to be, or is, really, but I feel like today's is a little more coherent and thought-out than usual. Maybe that's what Grace was doing in my dream last night, a little bit of clarity. Clever boots, evils understood.

Peace, Taco.

A Whirlwind Romance

I fell in love today. That's right, I fell in love. I love the brevity of that expression, and the implication, because of the past tense, that the action is already complete, like I fell in love this morning, dealt with it, came full circle, and now, at only two in the afternoon can write about the experience like a long-ago high school romance. I fell in love today, it was beautiful.

I was listening to the WTF podcast with Marc Maron, episode #417 with Tom Segura (don't worry guys it wasn't MAN-LOVE I ain't one-a-dem POOFS! Hey! HA-HA! HA-HA! HA-HA! NO I'M NOT!!!!) and having a really great time. The ep was definitely in my top... top ten? Top ten guests, maybe not top ten episodes if you consider that the Louis CK and Judd Apatow interviews both span two episodes, but now we're getting off course. Anyway, so I was listening to Marc and Tom talk their talk about being touring comics and it was really great – Tom Segura is a funny guy with heaps of cool stories. He kept making reference to his wife though, and how funny and cool she is, and like, okay, maybe it was just from the cool, pal-ish tone he kept referring to her with, but I was like, “damn son, this girl sounds like one fly chick-momma.” The seed had been planted.

So after Tom and Marc wrapped it up I downloaded ep #387 which featured the aforementioned wife, whose name is Christina Paszitzky and whose voice graced my ears almost as soon as ep #387 (which is a live episode) started. Tom had described her as “very sharp” and “quick”, so I already had something to go off of, but every word she said sounded more confident and more WOMANLY. Her parents are Hungarian, hence the crazy last name, and she's a touring comic just like her husband. She. Is. AMAZING!

After her portion of the live ep finished I stopped paying attention, and continued swooning, and as soon as I got home from cleaning where I'd been listening to the podcasts initially, I went online and downloaded a few episodes of the Your Mom's House podcast which Tom and Christina do weekly, but not before doing a google image search of Christina Paszitzky to find that, yes, my auditory-based assumptions were correct, SHE'S BEAUTIFUL. And she slays on the podcast, as, to be fair, does Tom. They're both quick-witted and clever, but fuck Tom, fuck him right in his stupid head, because my love for Christina had blossomed into its own fully-fledged beast with eyes and ears and a heart beating savagely in the mist, illuminating darkness. I realized though, after about an hour and a half of dreamy bliss-listeining (blistening) that it could never be, and that for every fantasy I was having of hilarious passive-aggressive confessions of my amour by way of email to the Your Mom's House podcast, they had probably already received a hundred similar ranting scrawls of passion from lonely male fans in fits of lust.

So I gave up my dreams of her, and put them to rest in a small cardboard box inside my heart, and buried them in the back yard, next to the fruit tree and the suspicious mound when Uncle Denny went back to Europe. I will continue to listen to Christina and Tom on their podcast, always slightly envious of their happiness, but never again with the same eagerness as on that first morning, when I was transported, by that “very sharp”, “quick” mistress who will forever hold a place in my heart, Christina Paszitzky.

Peace, Taco.

Last Night's Antics

The first good thing that happened today was I woke up. That sounds a bit morbid doesn't it? Well dead the arrogance guys, every day you don't wake up to fire bearing down on your pathetic human face and bugs crawling beneath your skin, you should be thankful... today was one of those days for me, and I chalked it up to good luck.

Also though, I woke up at 10:30am with very little hangover to speak of after a reasonable effort drinks-wise at the Rochester last night, so that's another boon. Finally though, I woke up to the reality that my family and close friends do NOT, in fact, hate me, and want to destroy my comedy career. What more can a guy ask for! Okay, explaining: I had a dream just before I woke up wherein I was on some sort of comedy tour, and my family and a few close friends were there – I seem to remember there were exactly fifteen people, for some reason. They were all standing in a line along the bar, and I was in the middle of a sparsely populated room, trying my best to entertain apathetic losers, and in doing so, going way over my allotted time. I got halfway through my 'Friend's Girlfriend is a 9.5 out of 10' routine, and then my mum called me out for going over time. Infuriated, I threw my bag on the floor and stormed out of the bar and into the bar toilets, where I found an almost full bottle of vodka, and, feeling slightly dejected and stroppy, partook upon it's liquid delights.

I don't know why I stated getting all wordy and verbose at the end of that description there... maybe the ethereal nature of the dream necessitated a flowery description, or maybe I'm just a cunt. We'll never know for sure, will we?

No.

Also something great about this morning is that I get to listen back to the thirty or so minutes of me MCing the Rochester last night. We once again had our best night ever, that makes three weeks in a row now of breaking records, hopefully things keep going like this. I'm pretty sure the posters on the ground are proving a great success and I can see people looking at them every time they walk past so FUCK YEAH! I'm still unsure about my 'Nursing Homes into Casinos – Racism' routine, it didn't completely hit last night, although I did still get to say everything I wanted to say and it finished on a big laugh as well... it doesn't have the pacing of a great routine, but it does have a few big laughs in there, and for something that actually has a point to make (more or less... ha) it should be okay for a few months... I might pull it out for the fringe show, we'll see.

Finally, last night I, true to form, was shot down for an drunken offer for last-minute sexy sexy times by a ladygirl. Nothing new there, but considering how fucking great the night preceding my ultimate failure at the hands of woman-kind was, I think I can handle it. You win some, you lose some folks, and as the great Ned Kelly once said, “at least I can still jack it to internet porn when I get home.”

Peace, Taco.