Tribute

This is pretty cool:

To celebrate Craig's birthday and his 28 years on this planet, i have decided to do a short tribute to the guy, since i cannot be in melb to help celebrate.

Therefore, Craig, friends of Craig - read on for…

SAM'S FAVOURITE CRAIG MOMENTS!

– cue cheesy music –

• Craig running across the Eastern Freeway several times with Rob in peak traffic to remove the pieces of my shattered bookshelves (a moving mishap)
• Drunkenly ringing Switzerland from Pony on Fender's mobile
• Being the only one to care that Pigdon St's outdoor toilet was going up in flames. Some genius had put a candle on top of the toilet and it had toppled over. see www.flickr.com/photos/craiga/15240983/
  Despite his drunkeness, Craig was the only one at the gathering to responsibly organise water distribution onto the flaming cistern. Incidentally, my fave Craig quote was one that i heard that night - "Rob you dickhead, stop laughing and get a bucket of fucking water!!!!!!" (second one is "It's 5am. The trams are running. Where is my goddamn taxi?!!")
• Denting the shit out of Jacinta's cookery pan in a drunken music-inspired moment
• Wiping up the vomit from the kitchen floor at my 21st (what a champ - wasn't even his vomit)
• Playing bass in Look Who's Toxic

So there is my Craig tribute - u can add any other memories and send it on. Hope u have an ace birthday Craig!!

Thanks Sam-in-Switzerland. That's gotta be one of the nicest messages I've ever gotten for my birthday.

Neil also sent me a lovely birthday message, showing me at my best.

Thanks guys.

Birthday

It's my 28th birthday this Friday. I haven't really organised anything, but it would be good to go out, see a good band and get shitfaced (after the footy, of course).

Let me know if you want to join in, and I'll let you know what's going on.

EDIT: For what it's worth, there's not much going on that night, so we're just going to meet up for drinks at the Towny. I'll be there after the footy, around 10:00.

Dying Phone Part 2

Now I can't get my phone out of silent mode, which makes it very difficult to find.

If you need to get in touch with me, send an email to craig@lookwhostoxic.com. I've got a little notifier on both my work and home computer that will tell me as soon as I get an email so, provided I'm on my computer (and I'm a pretty big nerd, so it's likely), I'll get back to you quick-smart.

(Everything But) Zed’s Dead

My mobile phone continues is long, drawn-out death.

During the week, unknown callers were being displayed as "Private Numbe>", and after this weekend I only have phone numbers for people with names beginning with Z. Which is great if I need to call Zac or Zoltan, but if you're Aaron, Yolanda, or anyone in between, sorry, but you're out of luck.

The Fish, The Rose, and I

As some of my closer friends already know, a couple of weeks ago, I had a little trouble… errr… downstairs… you know, around the back.

Yeah… anyway.

I may have tracked down a cause. On the day before the unpleasantness began, I had the Grilled Fish of the Day at The Rose Hotel on Napier Street, Fitzroy for lunch. I had the same dish (a different fish, but still grilled in the same way) yesterday, and I haven’t been feeling too flash ever since. I’m not saying there’s a problem with the fish at The Rose, but there’s definitely a problem with the fish, The Rose, and I.

Responsibility

Recently, Hayso wrote a rather blunt opinion of a band his band played with. There was a rather nasty reply from the other band, which led to Hayso apologising, which led to Neil getting angry, which led Hayso to ponder whether he should be a prick or not.

In my opinion, it’s the responsibility of anyone who writes anything on the internet to be very thoughtful about the words they choose. Once you click that Submit button (or type mput *.html if you’re old school), those words become part of the public domain. Even if you delete them from their original source, chances are that a copy still exists in Google’s cache, the Internet Archive, RSS readers, and so on, and people are going to be able to find them.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t express an opinion. I encourage that. I’m just saying that you should exercise a little editorial control. If you couldn’t be bothered, maybe the opinion just isn’t well formed enough to be comitted to public record.

Whiskey

I’m not sure what to make of our Sydney audience. We worked our arses off and played a really ace show, but, to me, the audience just didn’t seem very appreciative at the time. Maybe we’re crap and Sydney people are too polite, but everyone I spoke with afterward said they really enjoyed the show.

Maybe Sydney is even worse than Melbourne when it comes to showing appreciation? Maybe it’s because we were playing on Sunday afternoon, just after everyone had Kangaroo burgers? Maybe it’s because up until then, they’d only had artsy-electro-noise to entertain them?

Either way, we enjoyed ourselves. I finally got to meet Karen and Ben — Karen is Jo’s younger sister, Ben is her husband and the gig was their wedding anniversary. I met a whole bunch of pretty cool people, just like this guy, Chris. A lot of them seemed to be English, but I guess that makes sense since Ben’s from Manchester.

I also managed to befriend the two beautiful bartenders who were working at the venue, who kept my glass of whiskey full for most of the night. I was hoping to meet up with them later at The Metro, but I couldn’t get in, probably due to do with my inability to walk or talk straight.

Burst Tyre

Somewhere in the suburbs of Sydney on our way home, just a few hours after joking about how much of a pain in the arse it would be if we got a flat tyre, it happened — the rear, driver’s side tyre burst.

I pulled over by the side of the M5 Motorway, about two feet from the side of the road. Matty and I unloaded three speakerboxes, four guitars, the spare tyre, the jack, and the crowbar and, after I fumbled about with the winding mechanism, Matty jacked up the car.

We tried to remove the wheel, but had no luck. The van’s previous owner had put mag wheels on the car, and the crowbar that I had wouldn’t fit into the tight space around the nuts. I’d always assumed that mag wheels were just covers you clipped on top of your normal wheels, but I was wrong.

So, we were stuck by the freeway with a flat tyre and no way to get it off the car. By this time, Neil and Rob were at our meeting point — Krispy Kreme donuts, of course — so we asked them to get a telephone number for the NRMA. I wasn’t a member, but I thought they might be able to help us change a tyre for a small fee. Unfortunately, again, I was wrong.

At this stage, Matty took control of the situation — I was hungover, angry and very little help. He got in touch with Neil and Rob again and tried to explain that we needed a thinner crowbar, and asked them if they could find an auto store to buy one from, but I’m not sure if the message got through. Then Matty decided I was going to join the RACV, and lent me the membership fee.

An hour or so later, a tow truck showed up to carry the car from it’s dangerous position beside the freeway to a suburban shopping centre carpark. Matty went to get us some food and I waited for the NRMA guy to show up.

About two and a half hours after the tyre actually burst, our mechanic arrived and the end of this ordeal was in sight. He jacked up the car with relative ease and removed four of the five nuts. I’m not quite sure what was wrong with the fifth one, but he ended up having to snap it off with his nut-removing power drill. It was strangely satisfying to know that even if we the correct crowbar, we still couldn’t have done anything and the $170 I paid for RACV membership was, in fact, worth it.

We attached the wheel to the four remaining bolts. The mechanic assured us that the wheel would be perfectly safe for a drive to Melbourne, but also warned that I would have to get it fixed as it could become a problem.

After around three hours, we were finally back on the road. Matty wanted to skip Krispy Kreme and just get the hell out of that devil-town, but I was determined to get those donuts. I picked up three dozen (one for home, one for work and one for the family) and without question they were the best tasting donuts I’ve ever had.

LT3 in Sydney

We’re finally back home.

Instead of telling the stories in one big entry, I’ll break it up into a bunch of smaller ones.

Pony Tonight

It’s only just struck me that we’ve done just about zero promotion for the Look Who’s Toxic show at Pony tonight.

Come to Pony for the Look Who’s Toxic show! Look Who’s Toxic are amazing! 9:30! Whoo! Whoo!