"I am telling you, I can feel the back of my skull!"




Ok....I know you are getting bored with these now. Detect Dan. Root out Rolf. They may have been a success but have a go at "Where's Woody?"




If you look closely you can see that I am on Telly. Savalas that is.




I showed this picture to my mum.....her response???" Where did you take that?" Oh dear!




The biggest binoculars in the World....I bet.......





Nice Shiners Kidda!!


Ok. So dates are a bit of a blur to me now. But I got to LA and Scotty met at the airport (LAX) sporting two award winning black eyes sustained from a game of basketball. I have frequently in the past made fun of Scott fro his large and distinguished nose, but even I was sad to see this monolith of nasal greatness in a swollen state. His eyes were turning a deep shade of yellow as the blackness was abating, but it did still look very severe! The upshot of this destruction was that his proboscis was full of the most spectacular bloody bogeys that mankind has ever witnessed. I am fully au fait with them as he insisted on showing me them every time that excavated one of these beauties from his nostril. Although sore, he mined like a Cornishman with a new order from Heinz.

Scott showed me to the hostel in LA’s less than salubrious Venice Beach district, and while almost on the beach, the lodgings were not to a standard of which I have enjoyed on the majority of my stay. Although we did have an en suite shower, it was little more than a coat rack as it didn’t work beyond a weak dribble. The view from the window was also less than inspiring although not as brutal as it could have been. This was just as well as the lack of curtains or blinds meant that we became very well accustomed to the view at any given hour of the day. This was a blessing as the sun tended to wake us at a reasonable hour and I suspected that our combined laziness would conspire to see us waste the majority of the days in bed sleeping off hangovers. This proved the case when we moved on to Las Vegas for my second visit. More about that later.

Although Venice was not the most beautiful area, the beach was expansive and entertaining. As beaches go, it was very nice and I know that Scott has some great moody photos of the life guard stations. It was, however, the oddballs that frequented the boardwalks that kept us entertained. It appears that in LA you can wear what you want, do what you want and nobody will bat an eye! This proved to our advantage when we mooched along the beach areas with clothes that were about 3 wears past their specified wash dates. Some of my socks were taking themselves for a stroll long before I awoke. We have developed the most accurate method of testing the suitability of pre worn clothes for subsequent outings using the little known technique of sniffing. If you are still standing after a deep lungful of pant aroma, then they are good to go. IT also helped when I managed one of my patented drunken topless commando rolls along the centre of the road. But the less said about that, the better I think. But I was unscathed.

We only had a few days in LA which saw us head to Hollywood. I won’t go on about it too much as it was a bit of an anticlimax. It is dead scruffy. Even the boulevards with the World famous stars on were a bit on the tatty side. It was during these few days in LA that Scott carefully led me down the road to coffee addiction. I know that previously in this blog I have mocked Red Watch York for their caffeine consumption, but Scott finds it physically impossible to pass a Costa Coffee or Starbucks without fuelling up on a Latte with extra shot. A shot. Of coffee. How have we allowed the word “shot” to be assigned to coffee? A shot is something that either a gun does or a tequila et al is consumed by. Not a bitter tasting hot beverage! “Shot” is far too cooler word to be applied to coffee! Coffee is there to be drunk when you want something inoffensive and easy to stomach, not something that can be ordered by “the shot!” I might have a howitzer of gingernuts to go with that. Or an annihilation of Garibaldi’s. A shot of coffee makes no sense and never will. As we caught the bus back from Hollywood to Venice, a drunken man threatened the bus driver with a cork screw while we were bored to the point of eating our own shoes by a local. I have never met such a boring man. Apart from me, he has to be the most inane person that God has ever blessed with life. He gave us the history of every municipal building that the bus happened to pass. Oh well….I expected LA to have its fair share of freaks but I wasn’t expecting one to be freakishly boring.

We hit a few bars and met some oddballs there too. Quite the opposite of boring man, we met someone who was so over the top that we had to escape him as he befriended us and began to tell his tall tales. His mate was a decent bloke but kept being told to shut up by “super interesting guy”. So we told some white lies and avoided them for the rest of our night in Santa Monica. If you cast your minds back to the New York section at the beginning of this blog, you might remember that I went to a comedy club called Gotham and saw a rather lewd guy as the headline act. (Just checked on that and I didn’t mention the comedian but I will finish my rather mundane anecdote regardless). While in the Circle Bar in Santa Monica I bumped into the same comedian. Can’t remember his name. Wish I hadn’t started that now. Forget I wrote it. Just move on to the next paragraph. I assure you that later there are better celeb stories. Well one anyway.

So, where to go after LA? I have to be honest and as long as you don’t tell Scott I will be. Shh! I didn’t like LA. It did have its good points, don’t get me wrong. Seeing him was the best and the laid back attitude to everything was a winner. BUT! It is just very scruffy and spread out. I know we weren’t staying in the best of areas but I can’t see that the more luxurious locales were that much better. So I was pushing in my subtle style for a move to somewhere more, well, clean. I loved my time in Vegas but Scott was not over impressed as he isn’t too much of a gambler and was struggling for someone to consume biblical amounts of beer with. Time for me to change his opinion! Cheap flights a-go-go to Vegas and we checked in to the Monte Carlo Hotel.

Now I think that Monte Carlo is see to be a better standard of hotel than the Excaliber from my earlier visit. In fact there is very little to choose between them. All very comfortable and great fun. Although I have to admit that I do enjoy the themes of the other hotels. How do you make a theme for Monte Carlo? Park big boats along side the hotel? Have young, beautiful and loaded people swanning around? I can guarantee that the beautiful people were missing in action! The same lever of fat people with the comical addition of stacks of cowboys as the rodeo was in town! I wanted a cowboy hat but couldn’t bring myself to lower my standards to look like one of these ten gallon morons! The worst outcome of the rodeo, apart from the more expensive rates, was that the majority of the bars had country music playing. My dad is a fan of country music and I ridicule him for it. No person should ever be in such a mental state they actively encourage these miserable crooners. Dwight Yoakam…..Travis Tritt….Garth Brooks……Buddy Jewel…….Clint Black…….Waylon Jennings? Need I say more? Do their names not speak volumes? The women are just as bad. I ask you…..would you buy a record by Suzy Bogguss? And Amber Dotson sounds like a 1970’s Japanese car and no one needs them. The one thing that they all have in common is that they sing songs that are so incredibly miserable that you could play one at a children’s party that involved balloons and clowns and the kids would still be irreparably damaged despite years of teenage therapy. With the lovely sunshine and fresh air, cowboys should be the happiest fools that ever lived. Not singing about one of their brothers that drowned trying to rescue his 37 school friends that were trapped when the “rickety ole bridge” collapsed and the bus plunged into the Mighty Grasp of the “Ole Lady” river in 1957. I bet that didn’t even happen but you can’t convince these miserable bastards to sing about anything less than their mothers own suicide. I understand that some people need to be looking on the black side of life for their livelihoods. Undertakers do. Mortuary workers perhaps shouldn’t be grinning and wearing their hats at jaunty angles. But a singer? You have the opportunity to sing about anything, ANYTHING in the whole beautiful world, both true and fabricated! Some people are just not suited to their line of work. The role of a drugs mule should perhaps not be recommended by the school careers advisor to someone suffering from IBS, for example. (That is copyright by the way as it could be my first groundbreaking screenplay.) But a country singer can sing about anything. But no. My dog left me to go start a family with my wife seems to be a more attractive option to Hank McBisonstretcher and his chums. Well, don’t pollute my ears with your depressing dirge thank you. I am still trying to get the sound of the throttled infant out.

While in Vegas Scott became addicted to black jack and loved it. It became increasingly difficult to get him away from the tables but I think he was “up” on the whole experience so no harm done! We had a number of beers and I noticed how Scott manages to save money. While you are playing the tables, you can ask the cocktail waitress to fetch you a drink of any nature for the princely sum of $1. Scott had read in a book that you can get away with $1 per round and proceeded to do this, whereas I think that $1 each for a $5 bottle of corona is more than fair! He just won’t listen! We did manage to get to a bar called Tangerine for a party where the finals for a bikini contest were being held, but I won’t go into that as he hasn’t mentioned it to his friend Lyndsey, who might not appreciate us perving at thongs etc! While queuing to get into Tangerine we befriended Keith who insisted on buying us our first round on his expenses credit card! Top bloke eh? We thought so until he never left our side and then failed to buy another drink all night! Not that we were blinded by bikinis, but we only realised this when questioning how we had both managed to spend a million dollars each that night. We also drank at a bar in MGM Grand where I bumped into my old mate Chad Kroeger again. He nagged us to let him hang out with us, but we made it a rule that no bearded men were aloud to bring down our smooth rating. Sorry Chad. Next time maybe if you lose the ferret. In keeping with my celebrity spotting nature, in the airport as we left Vegas he pointed out Mr Universe who was boarding a plane to somewhere or other. Not my idea of a celebrity but I know Scott has loads of “men’s health” magazines where he can stare for hours at muscley men in underpants.

That’s about it for Vegas I think. Although I am amused about the M&M’s shop and how low grade Americans rush to go there! Would English people crawl over themselves to get to the Kit Kat shop? I don’t think so. The chocolate sells well but I can never see how the name of a chocolate brand becomes a brand in itself! We used to make fun of kids who wore product branded clothes at my school. You just know that their Mums made them wear them as they were “perfectly good t-shirts”. Mums might be full of good economic sense, but wearing a Tampax t-shirt can never be cool. Mum, that goes for buying 17 gallon drums of shampoo and decanting them into “proper” shampoo bottles. What else for this section of the catch up? Had a second disastrous haircut that cost a fortune. Had to trail around Las Vegas while Scott found a suitably expensive moisturiser. I make do with Stork SB margarine. As a moisturiser you understand. Wish I hadn’t begun that sentence now. Got visions of Last Tango in Paris. Oh and Scott tried to book me a low fat meal on the plane to New York. Did I mention that the Big Apple was my next destination? I will do that in the next catch up and begin to try and describe Scott’s inability to remain tidy in any given space. I will however whisper at the end of this that it is great to see him and I finally admit that travelling with him is better than going it alone. Shhhhh! Even though we tend to get really drunk and don’t wake up until mid afternoon. I have probably missed out loads but I will have a chin wag with Scott and see if there is anything that you need to know about. New York next…hold onto your hats.

The Sky Tower in full Summer glory!


31st December 2006

In the first instance, this was written on a plane so spelling mistakes and bad grammar might be all too present. Not dat it isn’t neway is it? So I will try 2 correct it l8er if I cn B arsed.(Which reminds me that New Zealand exam boards are now accepting text speak as an officially recognised method of writing answers in exams now. I lie not!)

Where do I start? An apology, I think, just in case any of you were wondering what happened. Did I simply drop off the face of the Earth? Had I been catapulted into the World of celebrity after my ground breaking appearance on Shortland Street so that I no longer wished to associate with mere mortals such as yourselves? Had my second night at the Classic Comedy Club in Auckland gone so bad that I had literally “died” on stage, a la Tommy Cooper? Answer, none of the above. Sorry to have left you all in the dark. My explanation follows.

After landing in Auckland and taking the big deep breath that I recounted in my previous postings, I slipped into and beyond “normal” existence and mundane routine. I did perform for a second time at the Classic and was seriously thinking about some gainful employment for my remaining time in New Zealand. Tracey Collins, our Mad Kiwi Accordionist, had been fabulous in making me feel welcome in New Zealand, as had her friends and fellow mentalist great people, Cat and Neil. However, as is often the case with the International Man Of Apathy, doing nothing seemed like the best option. Is it better to allow a large dog to maul an infant so that you don’t upset the “don’t be cruel to animals” people, or do you kick the Alsatian right in the face and become the hero of the NSPCC? There is always the third option. Walk away and pretend that you didn’t see the marauding canine, mouth a slobbering as it imposes its vice like grip on the victim’s throat, knowing that out of the two, the dog is less likely to stitch you up. Having carefully considered all three options, I opted for the most apathetic one available and went for a beer. I know that I will one day have to face up to the responsibility of my own decisions. Not today though. Tough luck junior, and try to keep it down, your strangled whimpers are ruining my brandy.

So I went for a beer. In Los Angeles. With Scott. This may seem like an absurd way to do nothing, to travel 13 hours on a cramped aeroplane for a beer, but I have no responsibilities on this trip. Well, none other than enjoy it. I wasn’t enjoying “it” in Auckland for one simple reason. I needed a mate to talk crap with. Tracey could talk crap, and often abused that privilege, but it isn’t the same as your oldest mates. I had become friendly with a comedian from the Classic called Ben, but he moved on to Sydney and wandering Australia. I just got to thinking, “what am I doing here?” In truth, the answer was nothing of any note. A great deal of that was through my old fashioned laziness, and a lot through worrying about what I should be doing, i.e. get a career and a life sorted. Silly boy. I can already hear Fenners, Kev and Jeff shouting at me. I know, but when your head gets infested with the guilty wasteful nonsense it is a bugger to shift. I needed to be somewhere else and with a friendly face. So that was that.

I didn’t leave without a couple of odd things to report. Oh by the way, this is going to be a huge entry by the looks of it. Better get a flask and hide the sharp objects. I was asked back to the Classic to do what was to be my final gig in the two gig run. I wasn’t nearly as nervous as before, barely breaking a sweat on stage. This was a little disappointing as I had written a gag to account for this phenomena and it lays wasted now. I even threw in a couple of new bits and jiggled the order but it didn’t phase me. I still had the cheat sheet on the table on stage but I didn’t refer to it as much. The reception from the audience, numbering more than 12 this time, was quite good. Again, I am not the finished article, but I was enjoyed and was told so afterwards. Just got to relax more and involve the audience more rather than approach it like a monologue. The greatest thing about the second gig was that one of the acts on after me was really confident. Too confident. He was giving advice to us all, including the very talented and well established Penny Ashton who was the compere for the night. He was stating fabulous things like “ I don’t bring family to my gigs as I want honest laughs so I can gauge how well I am doing” and “ I only go for the intellectual humour as the other stuff is just too base!”.. He was even having a go at other professional and famous comedians for their work Oh how all of the comedians in the green room silently placed imaginary pool balls into long socks and formed a visceral queue as was last seen with Ray Winston in SCUM! He was to be our soap filled pillow case target, ain’t that right , Private Pile? The problem is that you HAVE to be supportive of the other acts. Anyone who has been to a comedy club on a few occasions will have been lucky enough to see someone die on their arse. Some may report that I did, but they would be liars and probably mentalists with a history of violent crimes too. But I rest assured that, should I carry on and do more gigs, I will die at some point and probably more often than I care to imagine. At least I have done it and know that on at least three out of the four times I have attempted something like it I have at least got a few laughs or better. Tumultuous applause might be pushing it a bit far, but in all honesty I have not embarrassed myself too badly.

I was second on the running order. A blessing and a curse. It meant that I got my bit over and done with so less time listening to others while waiting for my turn while trying not to listen. Less time to panic and forget the opening line. More time to sit back and enjoy the other acts with a cold beer in hand. But it also meant that my time was coming very, very quickly! Penny opened and was very good, the first act was a little flat but did ok. As he came off the stage I congratulated him, more on survival than a barn storming act. As I descended the stairs towards the stage, I over heard Private Pile begin to dissect the first guys act with suggestions and explanations about how it could have been better. I put that out of my mind and got on with the job in hand. Once again the groaning jokes got a groan, the disgusted oohs and ahhs came at the right time and the gay fish doing “jazz hands” was well received. Penny came to resume her role as I had over run my time slot. I got all my act out, over ran a touch and genuinely felt over the moon that I had done a good job. Private Pile saw things a little differently. Apparently I was a bit too focused on bodily functions, poo, sex and the odd reference to onenism. That’s masturbation but there is no way I writing that word in my blog. And I was talking about Michael Jackson and David Hasselhoff at the time and I challenge you to talk about either without thinking “wanker!”.

So, I came off stage, not sweating and assumed a seat in the audience to drink beer and support the other acts. All was going well. Diane, from my first gig, was on again and was brilliant again. I am certain that she will make a name for herself. Ben was also great. Private Pile was introduced and took to the stage complaining about the amount of foreigners performing that night and that he was 100% Kiwi. The mixed audience weren’t sure how to react, and the opted for no reaction. Great! This bloke had criticised everyones' act that was on before him and he started badly. Still, plenty of time for his “more intellectual” wit to lift high above the heads of us one liners and poo storytellers. Next line…I kid you not and this is almost verbatim….” Aye, what if I had a heart transplant with the heart from a Maori?? When I woke up, would I start claiming loads of land?” Now that is not funny for so many reasons. Primarily because of the Maori people in the club and also performing that night. There is an issue with claiming of land rights from the Maori and the Pakeha (whites) and it is open to ironic teasing. In fact I have seen such on many occasions. But the delivery of this line and the stunned, offended silence from the audience had me cringing and celebrating all at once. His whole act followed this pattern. Not one laugh from anything he said. He was visibly desperate and search around for something to say that would get a laugh. Nothing! To understand this, I want everyone who reads this to talk for the same 5 minutes that Private Pile did, without stopping and trying to ignore a sea of totally blank faces. Do it. Talk about nothing for 5 minutes with no one responding to you. No songs allowed. Just talk. Then look at you watch when you think you are on about 3 minutes and you will see the second hand click one notch every 20 of your “brain seconds”. Time stands still. It takes forever. And he kept going! Not one laugh. And it wasn’t the audience being mean, he just had no comic lines at all.

I looked to the balcony where the comedians can watch the show and every one of them was lined up gleefully enjoying every minute of this imbecile crashing so spectacularly that I half expect his mum to stand up and yell “ You’re Crap!!! Tell us something funny!” And that is how it went. I HAVE seen people die on stage, but even they get the odd pity laugh or uncomfortable titter. Nothing. Not a murmur. The crowd were a very friendly and supportive bunch to everyone there that night, except Private Pile. He had not one punch line, joke or anecdote. I never want to see a man crushed as I wanted to see him crushed. And crushed he was. The memorable last line of his act? “ You lot obviously don’t get this so I am off!”. Exit stage left. It turned out that he had never performed before and was probably trying to convince himself rather than us that he was funny and experienced. Worst night of his life. One of my favourites! He walked off the stage and straight out of the club. I think I love him. Even when I do die horribly, it can be nothing like that. Silence from beginning to end. And the best bit was that every other comedian was dying to talk about how awful he was and how happy we were that he had humiliated himself but no one dare be the first to throw the muck.. I stepped into the breach and the floodgates opened! Nice!

After having a disastrous haircut from a Japanese hairdresser, I was reaching the depths of my apathy and said all too brief goodbyes to Tracey and some of the other people that I met in Auckland. Despite my expediency in leaving, I was genuinely sad to go with some much undone. But I had to do what I wanted and that meant going to see Scott in LA. I will miss Tracey, Cat and Neil and I will miss White Lady Burgers from the van just off Fort Street, best in the World.


I think I will be back, rejuvenated and refuelled with apathy. But the right kind this time. The right kind.

I thought that everything might be a bit much in one go so more catch up installments to come........