the ability to laugh at yourself

They say the ability to laugh at yourself is a good thing? Well… considering that I am proud to say that I can use power-tools both left or right handed, (maybe too proud), how did I manage to mash the IKEA assembly process of my Rigga coat stand so well? Only after I had tightened the last bolt with the supplied Allen Key, did I realize the whole thing needed to be completely taken apart and re-assembled.

Good Noise

Playing guitar in front of an audience after a lapse of many years was daunting, but totally satisfying. There was the fear of making a fool of myself to overcome. Now that I have done that, I feel relieved. Very relieved!

The opportunity of joining in with some very fine musicians had a dual effect. Firstly it kept me safe, because no matter what I did or didn’t do, the music wasn’t going to be bad. That kept the fear at bay. Secondly, there was the prize of acceptance.

When you become part of an ensemble, eyes meet, and there is a tiny imperceptible nod of approval and greeting. The music carries you. Lifts you.

Playing guitar is like riding a bicycle, you don’t forget.

Noise is the enemy

Sub-Titled: Headaches & Migraines

I can recall only about 5 experiences of having a headache during my entire life. So clearly, I am not in the position of commenting what it is like to suffer from chronic headaches or migraines. With that in mind, I can offer sympathy, but not much empathy. I simply don’t know what it is like to lay motionless in a darkened room for 2 days.

What I do know is… I know what it is like living with someone that does suffer from massive 24 to 48 hour headaches. Everything stops. You end up on tippy-toe, struggling to keep the house quiet. Even the quietest, most hesitant, “Is there anything I can do to help?” is viewed as an intrusion.

So delivering a hot herbal tea or a Panadol becomes an invasion. Shutting the door and keeping the blinds closed becomes a priority. Moving about the house becomes an obstacle course as you make sure you avoid any creaky floorboards or doors. You can’t pack the dishwasher and certainly can’t run it. And even though it’s the weekend, any plans of mowing the lawns are thrown out the shuttered window.

Noise is the enemy.

Try telling that to the kids. 2 days of being quiet is like a life-time punishment. Playing Lego or Pokemon can be great fun, but keeping the volume down isn’t.

With my young daughter, we often escaped to playgrounds. (BTW: I thoroughly recommend the sand-pit playground at Dendy Park, but the tip is… wear appropriate shoes that can contain sand and be prepared to get in at ground level… shifting large piles of sand at your daughter’s command is your job, get used to it.)

My older son was more difficult to contain. We often managed a subdued version of backyard cricket, but with no loud cries of “Howzat?” Backyard soccer was even harder, as goal-scoring meant the ball had to crash into the back fence.

And when my son had a sporting event, I often took my daughter, trying to balance the watching him part and keeping my daughter happy at the playground (thankfully usually located right next to each other). (Also BTW, thankfully)… my daughter is a gregarious, social soul, so at the playground, once she found a friend (at times she was not very discerning in who she considered a friend)… nevertheless, she became engrossed and happy and let me drift a little more towards watching my son play. (Which BTW, is a well-known and important part of “Dad, did you see me?”)

It may all sound a bit chaotic and improvised, but it’s hard to regret good times spent with your children.

The resistance of going to see a doctor was immense. Combined with my lack of personal experience, knowledge and understanding, this was probably the reason it went on so long. Eventually I made myself unpopular by insisting.

Wild Hair Versus Time Management

My hair has always been my distinctive feature. For years I had a very long ponytail. It was obscenely long, and by that I mean, it reached my bum cheeks. I suppose you could brand it a I-could-give-a-fig-what-you-think-of-it look. Now, having cut that tail away, my short hair has decided to appear unruly and a little wild. I like it that way.

Basically I have decided to go for a look that doesn’t require a check in the mirror. It’s now a take-it-as-it-is look. And while I might agree with Leonard Cohen when he says, “I don’t like your fashion business mister and I don’t like these drugs that keep you thin. I don’t like what happened to my sister”… I’d be foolish to think that I was attempting some anti-fashion statement, because, as we all know, my unruly take-it-as-it-is look was claimed by fashion long ago. They are well organized and a little smarter than me. (BTW: I don’t have a sister, but I do worry about the influence of the fashion industry on my 14 year old daughter)

I guess I should qualify what I mean by the I-could-give-a-fig-what-you-think-of-it look... I actually called it my trained-monkey look. Working in Germany as an Aussie, it made no sense pretending I could be reliably & stolidly German, instead, looking creative and a little exotic sure helped put a few extra Deutsch Marks in my pay-check. So really, in a way, it was a calculated, highly manicured I-could-give-a-fig-what-you-think-of-it-performing-monkey look.



My hair was always a topic opener. I'd be approached by strangers, in the street, in shopping malls, on holidays, asking, "How long did it take me to grow it? (the pony-tail)"... After a while, my answers became more creative. One story was that I started growing it in school. It was a strict school and didn't allow long hair, so, subversively I attempted to pretend I hadn't grown my hair long at all by brushing the back part forwards. Then (according to my story), my Maths teacher Mr McIntire stepped in and decided to humiliate me in front of the other students by making a pony-tail. Only he didn't succeed in humiliating me at all. I liked it... and.... kept it. So much for Authority trying to teach me THAT lesson.

That was one story. It's sort of true. It did happen that way, but I couldn't endorse it as the entire truth. Mostly it just happened without me noticing it. And that's not much of a story.

What I did notice though was that my look annoyed my family, so I think I played on that a bit. Call me a rebel or a black sheep, but it was a subject that cropped up constantly in the family environment.

Mum and I would joke that when we went out together, that I should perhaps walk a few steps away from her so people wouldn't think we were together. We joked about her disassociating herself from me. just in case she met someone she knew. She was fairly good-natured about it really.

My Dad, typically, applied his own sense of wry humour. He just said, "Enjoy it while you still have some."

That always reminds me of George Carlin's comment about people that shave their heads. He said, "If you really want to be bald, do what I did, wait a while."

But what do looks have to do with time management? Well, having maintained a I-could-give-a-fig-what-you-think-of-it look for years and, now cultivating a take-it-as-it-is look, I must also accept some perceptions about me that may or may not go with that look.

For instance… not too long ago I received a text message at about 8.30am from my sister-in-law. The text started with the line, “When you are awake….” At first I felt like I wanted to defend myself. “Hey! I wake up every day at 7am (even bloody Sundays!!)”… but I fought the urge, realizing I would be wasting my time with that sort of reply.

So fortunately I resisted the moment. Fortunately I realized that I wasn’t going to change a perception or opinion. Fortunately, the thought occurred to me, that…  and I had to admit that I been the one to cultivate the perception in the first place. When you think about it, one of the best things about Performing-monkeys (especially & after all) is that they don't need to respect the standards of mundane human behaviour like effective time management. There's a certain lack of expectation super-imposed in the look. That's the message of the look anyway.

Let me just add this… A few weeks later, on a Sunday morning no less, at 7.29am, I had a valid & legitimate reason for texting her, but I couldn’t help beginning it with “Sorry, I know it’s a bit early on a Sunday morning, but… “

Making Things Up…

Today I was told I was making things up…

When you are the one that needs to fix something that has been broken in an anger tantrum, you tend to remember it pretty well. For example: watching a door being slammed violently & repeatedly in a fit of rage (slammed perhaps 20 to 30 times?)… you realize that you are predicting an inevitable result.

To be true, the circumstances that caused the tantrum do become blurred over time, but the broken item and the process of fixing it become solid memories. I remember throwing stuff in the bin and seeking out replacements. I remember using various tools. I remember working with Dad as he used the welder, listening to his opinion how violent the action must have been to snap a piece of solid metal.

(Later, meaning today)… to be then told the breakage never happened is difficult to respond to. To be told that I am making things up leaves one speechless and leaves only one practical option … to simply walk around and point at the various repaired items. What else is there to say?

Alfred Hitchcock Lights

Sometime in the nineteen-nineties (I forget exactly when), Bavaria Film Studios dismantled an old studio, pulling down the building to erect a new one. This old studio had been the one that Alfred Hitchcock had used in the very beginning of his career. In fact, (or so I think), this was the place that Alfred Hitchcock got his first break. It wasn’t England and way before Hollywood… this was Munich in Bavaria.

To set the scene, let me explain that Bavaria Film Studios are big (you can compare them as the Warner Brothers of Germany). They even have a Studio Tour (which I also worked on, doing the camera effects of the Wild West Show)… Yes, the Germans have a Wild West Show!!

Now in case you don’t know, a sound stage is effectively an empty shell. Apart from sound-proofing, a massive door to allow a semi-trailer in, an extremely high ceiling (to position lights out of the way), and a large array of separate electrical fuses to run those lights, a sound stage is more like an empty warehouse. Not very romantic considering the “magic” that is made in there.

Apart from Hitchcock, who was making television in the early 50’s, (I was told he shot the scenes in German during the morning, then repeated those exact same scenes in English in the afternoon), many German and international films of the 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s had used this old studio. It was a piece of history.

I was involved in the design process of the new studio, so in a way, I am partly responsible for its’ demise.

The reality was that the old studio wasn’t flexible enough to meet the demands of modern production. Back in the 50’s, to fulfill the obligations of Hitchcock’s television production process, it had been fitted with a lighting-grid. This lighting grid was now old, but in use on a daily basis, most often for television. It was functional, but it had one major drawback; the lighting grid wasn’t retractable. It was hung too low. That meant it was still suitable and appropriate for TV production, but with a few caveats. Crane-work was limited. And clearly the height of sets was also an issue.

Well… the point of all this anecdotal meandering is this. I have 4 lights from that old studio. They are Bernhard Deltschaft 2K Fresnels. In perfect working order. They were given to me, but to keep the legalities intact, I paid $100 each for them. (To put that in some perspective, the globe alone is worth $1500).  Also, to keep the info flowing, in German, a light is called a Scheinwerfer, which translates back into English as, a light-thrower, which is a very apt description of what a film light does. Also, the word Fresnel explains that the light is focusable.

Well, I can’t certify, verify or prove that these lights were actually used in an Alfred Hitchcock production, but I can claim that they are from the “original” 1950’s studio, so there is a strong likelihood they were.

I am not big on collecting, but these lights count amongst my most prized possessions.

Memory Jogs

There is a good chance my daughter might not remember some of the things that happened when she was younger, so let me take a few moments to jog the memory.

Remember the time? Through the laneway opposite your old school? Remember the place I’d always park when picking you up from school?… When we discovered the ant march? Remember how we tracked it all along the street trying to guess just how many ants there were? Millions!

Remember how we tried to chose one ant and then follow it along its’ travels? And how impossible that was! We were pretty determined weren’t we, trying again and again. Remember how we squabbled, you claiming our special ant was over where you were, while I nonchalantly insisted it was here with me! And just because you had better eye sight than me, don’t think I will admit you might have been right!

Remember how we kept on telling each other, “Be careful where you stand, there’s another line behind you!” And there was! Remember how we discovered that whole new parallel march near the curb, and watched it spill over onto the road, realizing only then, that the other side of the street was connected. We needed a new estimate. Zillions!

Remember how we followed the trail… the trail that kept going around the corner of the street? Remember how we kept asking ourselves, “Was this one mighty ants’ nest or was it an ant jamboree, where all the local ant tribes had gathered?”

It was truly awesome. The word of the day. Does this jog your memory? It does mine.

I know you remember this? (You took the photo).



Our Playground Motto: “If it’s not dangerous, it’s not fun!”

I think we could confidently claim that we knew where every single one of these spinning-things was

(and could rate the playground) spanning an area from Port Melbourne to Wantirna down to Mordiallic.