Into it

I thought I'd have another crack at blogging. Woo.

2009 has been quite the year, and I feel I'd like to write down some of what happened. Blogging is good way of encouraging this: just pretend you're accountable to an online fanbase of millions and you'll never want for motivation!

My key word for '09 is 'detheorising'. This may or may not be an actual word.

Sometimes you can know something, but you don't really know it until you experience it, suffer through it, enjoy it etc. This has been a year of very little theory and a lot of experience. For that I am grateful.

have a seat

Tonight was the final thrash at standup for 2008. It coincided with the Frucor Christmas party so it was insanely full (which is great for performers: a comic's dream is a fire warden's nightmare after all.)

Needless to say, the V and Just Juice flowed freely all night.

Live comedy is quite the challenge. I've seen funny guys fuck it up and straight men nail it perfectly. The comedians who perform consistently well to a range of audiences are magi of the highest order.

Standup is good fun. Everyone should try it.

A Maserati would still be nice though.

I drank beer in bed on Saturday night.

It's not always true that combining two good things makes one great thing - think playing XBox in a bubble bath - but in this case it most assuredly is.

The older and wiser I get the more I believe that it's little things that make life great.

That's all I have to say about that.

The best things in the world are,

a) wikipedia

b) youtube

c) friends and family

d) facebook

e) good health

f) apple and grapefruit juice

g) google

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights should be ammended to include these seven essentials.

Entertainers first, politicians second, so...

It's all politics at the moment, both here and abroad.

a) Despite NZ cracking along pretty well, Labour is likely to get owned by National in the election. The same thing happened to the Liberals in Australia last year. I guess people like a change.

Party politics aside, I've always liked Helen Clark. She's smart, moderate, good on her feet, and generally well-spoken. Key has fucked up like 816 chances to have one over Clark during question time. Maybe he'll finally bring his A-game to the Prime Ministership.

b) The American presidential campaign - so good. 4 actors:

i. John McCain. My bet to win. He seems like an alright guy with a distinct lack of skeletons in the closet.

ii. Joe Biden. If he were a dessert, he'd be Vanilla ice-cream with a glass of water on the side i.e. a good safe option. I am told he got some good anti-womens violence legislation through congress in the 80s. Full credit.

iii. Sarah Palin is what I would technically refer to as a 'stupid idiot'. Plucked from relative obscurity, poorly breifed and without two coherent syllables to rub together. Likely to be the President by 2012.

iv. Barack Obama. Good guys often finish last. We'll see.

So much entertainment, so few gigs of permitted youtube downloads!

The machismo circle of life.

It was pointed out last week that it's less than three months until the Tauranga Half Ironman. This is not great news because a half ironman requires significant reserves of fitness and strength, and at the moment I'm basically a big bag of tallow with 14 pairs of trainers.

Athletics sports are only worthwhile to the extent that they can teach you something about real life, 'Lesson #42: stop being a lazy prick and get on with it' is one that keeps recurring in my own training. If I were to get athletics flashcards, they'd just be 52 bits of cardboard with 'lesson 42' written on each.

That said, stranger things have happened than my getting fitski in 3 months. Be afraid Revs, be very afraid. And lend me your bike. Please. Cheers.

Still voting for ACT though

Today is the last day of a fortnight's veganism. Key points:

1. It's very easy to eat too much beetroot.

2. Last fortnight's grocery bill = $13.84, and that includes soy truffles and enough dark chocolate to give Kate Moss thunder thighs.

3. Being vegan is a lot easier that raw-plus-yoghurt. With hindsight I see that raw for me meant 30 days without ingesting a single complex carbohydrate molecule. Instead I ate 400 kilos of nuts nuts and, healthy as those little beggars are in moderation, changing starch for little fatty protein nuggets is destined to wreak havoc on your guts.

4. Just quietly, I feel quite sharp. Awesome in fact.

So yeah, maybe those dirty hippies have a point? Who knew?!

Rambo V due next year too. Good times.

I watched the new Rambo last night. Though they called it Rambo it could just as accurately be called Seriously Bad Dudes Taken to School. Stallone didn't do anything that great in the 90s but I think Rocky Balboa and SBDTtS redeems previous cinematic transgressions. He's done well with those two.

Rocky Balboa and John Rambo are great characters, though very different: Rocky is optimistic to a fault, achieving greatness through sheer workrate. Rambo is the tortured collateral damage from 'nam - literally. He doesn't like himself and and he doesn't like humanity much either.

On the similarity side both Rock and John enjoy fucking up bad guys, so it's not all polar opposites to be fair.

Sylvester Stallone is one of the people in the world I would most like to meet (besides Jesus and that). I've heard him say how he just writes about what he knows and includes aspects of his own personality into the chracters of his movies. It'd be great to ask him how he simultaneously developed two such different movie heros.

Lots of extremely hot wives and girlfriends probably helps too.

I've just finished reading Eric Clapton's autobiography. His life went like this: medium-tough childhood, wrote some songs, smoked a tonne of crack, more songs, becomes alcoholic, son dies, more songs, sees the light, more songs.

There are two good things I rememeber from the book. One is his recollection of an afternoon in 1969 when George Harrison wagged a meeting with an acocuntant to go over to his place and smoke some doobage. Apparently George was so stoked to avoid the meeting that he wrote Here Comes the Sun, lyrics and music, in that one afternoon. I love that song, and can certainly identify with the joyful sentiment one feels when excused from a boring meeting!

The other thing is the most recent photos of Eric Clapton. He's 63 and looks to be in very good nick, notwithstanding his drinking enough vodka in the 80s to pickle a T-Rex. He was also a heroin addict for quite a while and, because he hated needles, would stuff it up his nose (apparently you need about 10x more than you would if you injected it to get the same hit - talk about an expensive habit!).

Because of the company I choose to keep I see lots of people who are pretty obsessed about food, excercise and healthy lifestyle, myself included. When I look at Clapton of Mick Jagger though I wonder if there are secrets to a long and vibrant life that transcend stressing about food and your body 24/7. Someone should do a PhD on it.

In other news, Spring is here. Hooray.

Back in the saddle

It's been a while. I've been compiling all the articles from the last 12 months relating to the Quarter-Life Crisis (that would be all of them) into one big document. I want to add a few more pics and graphs and see if it can morph into a coherent 'whole'. The topic is underrated I reckon: most people, myself included, fuck around way too much in their early adulthood. I'm going to write the key to avoiding this. It will be a masterpiece.

Other cool things in the world at the moment:

a) Winston Peters. Actually imortal, as this last fracard has proven. If he ever choses to quit politics he should become a vampire slayer - the undead wouldn't have a chance!

b) Sarah Palin. She gave a speech: "Foreigners are the Devil, and I'll sell Alaska to Exxon Mobil" and they lapped it up. Gold.

c) Weezer's Pixies covers on youtube. 'Velouria' is a highlight for me.

d) Cucumbers are coming down in price. This is a two-fold blessing. 1. Cucumbers are delicious. The nicest thing Aimee has ever done for me was to buy a cucumber for me in June! June I say! It must've cost her like 30 bucks. AND 2. Nothing says 'summer is on the way'like a cheap cucumber.

e) I went to the Teps on Sunday and there was a notice apologising for the pool temperature being 34 degrees. Why on earth would they apologise for that!? Swimming laps in a spa pool was farkin' brilliant!

This blog represents 2 weeks of intense thought. It's good to be unemployed.