Poor Stevie

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but J-man is kind of a big deal. In colder weather and in the ocean he is just a medium deal.

On an unrelated note J-man works in the music industry, meaning he sometimes gets tickets to gigs and takes me as his guest. And ladies, if you’re not going to marry for love you should definitely marry for clean toilets at music festivals. I will leave the guessing about why I married J-man up to you.

Recently we went to Splendour in the Grass together, like a BOSS(es).

On the night before we left for Splendour, J-man wasn’t giving too much away about the Wicked camper van we hired. I understood why when I – with what I believe is a fairly justified and reasonable stance against rape – saw this pretty rapeish slogan on the back of the vehicle we would be spending the next five days of our lives in:

It was an uneventful trip interstate and, surprisingly, it didn’t involve getting pulled over and cavity searched to within an inch of our lives.

When we arrived at Splendour, we chose a terrible camping spot we had to stick with because Ted Bundy the Wicked van couldn’t get up a slope with its three horse power engine. Obviously one of those horses was busy eating, the other was really a donkey and the last one was already dog food.

So we dealt with it, set up camp and did a lot of this:

That night we went side of stage. Did you hear that? Side of stage. I don’t know if you know, but that means the side of the stage. The actual stage. You know the stage where only famous people and their concubines are allowed? Yeah, we were there. On the side, that is. The side of the stage:

That there is the back of Kanye West. It turns out that while the side of stage (repeat side of stage) gives you a great behind-the-scenes view, including his poor dancers doing costume changes in front of leering roadies, you do spend a lot of time looking at people’s butts. But still! Famous butts! I felt pretty smug being allowed side of stage and signed a bunch of babes’ boobs without them even asking. Hey, just living the motto of the Wicked van, man.

And then J-man went and stole my thunder:

Doing a meme as your first update in about two months is so lazy, I know. But I’m just about to drive to Windsor for work and I’m pooping in my pants. I need a distraction. Also, clean underpants.

I. Put your iTunes/Ruckus/Napster/Zune/etc on shuffle.
II. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
III. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!

1. IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OKAY” YOU SAY?
Like O, Like H (Tegan and Sara)

2. WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
C’Mon Billy (PJ Harvey)

3. WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Plastic (Portishead)

4. HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
Lucky (Radiohead) teehee.

5. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?
Seagulls (PJ Harvey)

6. WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Pizza Hut Ad (Ween)

7. WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Is It Medicine? (The Knife)

8. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR PARENTS?
After Dark (Le Tigre) eeerr…

9. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Airships (Metallic Falcons)

10. WHAT IS 2+2?
Goodbye Sober Day (Mr Bungle)

11. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Misfit Love (Queens of the Stone Age)

12. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
The Holy Filament (Mr Bungle)

13. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Magpies (Joan As Policewoman) sheesh.

14. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
It’s Like That (Handsome Boy Modelling School)

15. WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
You’ll Find A Way (Santogold)

16. WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Everything In Its Right Place (Radiohead)

17. WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
The Wolves [Act I and II] (Bon Iver)

18. WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Say Aha (Santogold) Quite inappropriate, I would think.

19. WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
For Today I’m A Boy (Antony and the Johnsons) hehehe

20. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Far Away (Martha Wainwright)

21. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Creosote Desert Sessions 9+10

22. WHAT’S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
Free At Last (Antony and the Johnsons)

23. HOW WILL YOU DIE?
What Deaner Was Talking About (Ween)

24. DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
Secret Heart (Feist)

25. IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
Paradise (Le Kingste)

26. WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
Honeymoon (Tomahawk)

27. WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
Lullaby (Ween)

Moving from the Central West to Sydney was always going to be pretty wack. You know, the electricity, the running water and the gays. But there are far more disturbing things…

- Kissing people as a greeting. This is a fabulous way to catch me off guard and make me far more awkward than I naturally am. And I am awkward. Say hello to me and I blush, cough and hide in the toilets breathing into my trusty paper bag. I don’t understand this greeting unless you are my family or boyfriend. I think there should be an unwritten law about this – unless you have seen me nude you do not get to touch any part of me with your lips. And yes, I hear you, my family have seen me nude. In the country that’s how we say hello.

- Seeing `live’ music played on a laptop. I like to call this `cheating’. I get that modern music these days is filled with robotic doo whoop a dops and I’ll admit I’m a fan. But it’s almost too much to bear when a musician is singing over pre-recorded vocals. I think if you’re a solo artist and you can’t recreate your sound live without the help of a Macbook you should go back to your toll booth operating career. Or at least get a friend to pretend to play a synthesiser or something. Even that would be more impressive than launching Garage Band. I’d rather sit at the Vic in Orange and listen to someone play Lithium by Nirvana or Disarm by Smashing Pumpkins. Again.

- Lunch hour. Since the beginning of 2007 I’ve been under the impression that no one actually worked in the city except for I. I’m lucky enough to work staggered hours and so I rarely ever see anyone when I go out and get my reasonably priced $15.50 salad. Yesterday I didn’t work and was in Pitt St at 1pm. And ohmigod why would anyone ever live in Sydney? You can’t fling a second-hand purse without hitting two businesswoman, a CEO, a cleaner, a homeless man, a child in a pram, a group of emo schoolkids, a nun, a man with dreadlocks painting bad portraits, two secretaries in high-waisted polyester skirts and the woman behind the Chanel counter. As my mum likes to note in large crowds – `imagine all those poos!’

 List seven habits/quirks/facts about yourself.

1. The time I accidentally pooped myself in year 2 at a running carnival wearing a netball skirt still haunts me to this day.
2. I broke my nose when I fell off my trike into a ditch while chasing my sisters in the olde towne of Boorowa. The whole thing scabbed over and I still have a small scar under my nostril. My beloved Joel re-broke my nose the very first time I went to visit him in his home town of Copacabana. We were swimming together and he was playing silly buggers under the water and when I bent over to see what was going on, he leapt out of the water like Free Willy and headbutted me fair in the schnoz. He denies he broke it but I ask you what does a cracking sound, heavy bleeding, bruising and a different nose shape generally mean?
3. I have inherited my mum’s habit of throwing everything away. It used to bug me when I was a teenager and I would leave something on the table for 15 seconds only to find it in the bin, but now I am her.
4.  When I listen to my iPod I imagine a movie of my life set to that soundtrack. I have mentally nominated several songs I would like played at my funeral/wedding or convenientlyplaying when someone kisses me in the rain or murders me in an alley and I will then haunt  the killer with Whoopi Goldberg Patrick Swayze styles.
5. The other night I went out and ate heaps and heaps of ribs and it reminded me of the time when my grandpa came to visit in Orange and we went out for dinner and he had ribs. He got the sauce all over his face and hands and when the waitress asked if she could get him anything, he replied, “a bath”. Thinking about that time as I was covered in rib sauce made me really miss him.
6. After my first kiss, the dude told lots of people at school that I had tried to eat his face.
7. I lived above a shop when I was at uni in Bathurst and it was so sun-shiny and beautiful and I really miss drinking beers on our porch that overlooked a manky carpark.

I can’t tag seven people because I’m pretty sure I don’t actually have seven friends.

I would just like to declare right here, right now, that Peeping Tom at the Enmore Theatre on June 21 was the best show I have ever been to.

Even despite being in row v and mistaking Mike Patton for a stick figure in a nice suit.

Seriously, it was so sexy, loud, swingy and just fecking awesome.

I think it’s a really good sign if during the entirety of each song, a broad grin splits your face in two.

Even me, hater of the awkward encore dance, loved each of the fifty encores.

Oh my god. I am on a high and now I have to go to work and pretend to be serious.

When all I want to do is jump up on my desk and dance.

Stupid reality.

If I were British, and grew up on the estate, I would have totally hung out with Lady Sovereign when we were growing up. Joel and I went to see her on Saturday night, and for the first time since I wanted nothing more in this world than to plough Josh Homme, I have post-concert blues.

She played at The Forum which has the coolest toilets in the world, I spent a lot of time in them. She had like 52 support acts and wasn’t scheduled to appear until midnight and didn’t show her little ratish face until half past. By that time, I was getting fed up with the weird but expected crowd of people who were a mixed bag of little skanks in high heels, K-Fed looking guys, massive goths and little girls with their mums. I always forget how much I hate people until I’m forced to be standing up close and personal with them in a crowd.

* As a sidenote, I firmly believe that while I subject myself to these crowd situations, I still have personal space. You do not point across the room to your friend while ignoring that my nose is actually attached to my face, you do not wave your cigarettes around dangerously close to my retina, and you do not dislodge your chewing gum from your girlfriend’s tonsils while I’m standing in the middle of both of you, thankyou *

Lady Sov had the worst supports. Some band called The Bumblebeez made some noises that made me feel like someone was kicking me repeatedly in the head with a steel capped boot. And the girl who fronted the band was totally shit, looked really bored the whole way through and was wearing stupid stripy leggings. Once they had finished, there was about a 20 minute wait for the biggest midget in the game. When she finally appeared, I totally fell in love. She spoke at length between songs, she showed us her bra covered boosies, she wiped her bum with a Britney Spears t-shirt, she spat, drank beer, signed people’s things, flashed her famous hairy armpits (which were very impressive).

I could tell she’s incredibly witty and unspoilt by her fame. Plus, she said some of the funniest things I have ever heard…..like she told everyone to stick their middle fingers up at one point and then said, ‘yeah like this, usually I prefer two though’. Man, I wish I could take my dirty sense of humour, put it to music and dance around a stage.

It is well and truly up there as one of the best shows I’ve ever been to, despite having to stay up way past my bedtime.

Also..I know two picture posts in one day is too much, but here is a photo of me on my last night hanging out in Bathurst ever. The pub was empty except for these mingas who insisted in having their photo taken with me. Really weird and distressing, as illustrated.

I stole this photo from my friend’s myspace. That’s right Bron, I am watching you. Now. Hey, isn’t that my bra?