I'm Big Kev Excited

Hey tigers. Guess what day it is on Saturday? I'll give you a hint: It's the best flippin day in the whole world.

Now if you answered 'Doris Day' to the previous question, congratulations. You're an idiot. I would continue chastising you, but I'm way too excited because Saturday is, in fact, AUSTRALIA DAY! Kaboom!

It's actually a bit of a sad day this year as I'm usually getting burnt to a crisp at the Big Day Out music festival in Sydney and discussing in increasingly slurred tones the hilarity of BDO organisers inadvertently turning the Australian flag into a symbol of rebellion.

Last year also had double decker layers of ace because I was involved in one of the coolest festival fence jumps ever: I helped my boss at the Art Gallery, a 10 year member of Australia's notorious subterranean exploration gang Cave Clan and 15 of his screwball mates break into the festival through the sewage tunnel next to the main arena.

I *know*. And I seemed like such a quiet, polite boy.

Once we had arrived at the festival, my friend Bud, who had initially agreed to help me lift the heavy iron grating blocking the tunnel, was starting to have reservations.

"I dunno man. Lots of people about."

Although not necessarily keen to incriminate myself either, I was preoccupied with the thought of getting retrenched because I left my boss wallowing in effluent. "Listen," I cajoled. "I'll shout you a bourbo if you help me do this."

"Done." He said, skulling one of the bourbon and cokes he was carrying. You can also get him to eat BBQ grit using the same tactic.

We eventually found the grate near to the entrance of the main arena. Three pairs of white, pleading eyes stared up at us from the depths below. Bud and I looked at each other, looked down, swallowed hard, and then purposefully walked over to a nearby pylon to put our drinks down. A hand tapped me on the shoulder.

"You gonna break into the storm water drain?" asked the 14 year old Fear Factory fan, his eyes wide in anticipation. Observant kid.

My dry mouth minced the words. "Not exactly. Watch."

We walked over to the grating and yanked it open with surprising ease, expecting it to be heavier. Nothing happened for 5 long, heart thumping seconds, but when the first head popped out through the hole an excited cheer erupted from the surrounding crowd and people ran over to help pull out gate dodger after gate dodger -- as fast as they could climb the ladder. When all 16 were out, everyone cheered and clapped and slapped backs and then immediately dispersed.

The only person left hovering around the grate was a yellow shirted security guard, frantically looking left and right but finding nobody to grab by the shirt collar. The mob had won.


And we had a courageous story to tell for the rest of the day.

How to Win at eBay and Influence People

1. Decide that a beautiful new sunburst lawsuit-era Ibanez guitar with pretty pictures on it will exponentially increase your quality of life and your chances of hooking up with babes.
   
   
2. Studiously scour eBay during office hours until such a guitar appears.
   
   
3. Notice with disdain as two hateful eBay novices start a bidding war for the object of your affection, paying no heed to the eBayers code of last-minute engagement.
   
   
4. Decide to balk convention yourself and immediately contact both members, kindly pointing out that bidding on an item 6 days out is fruitless and serves only to increase the final sale price. Feel confident that you are being helpful and avoiding unnecessary condescension.
   
   
5. Receive no reply from the first member, and the following message from the second:
   
   
   
   
   
   
6. Wrinkle nose at lack of punctuation and civility. Shake head at overly clichéd war-cry. Begin devising cunning retaliation.
   
   
7. Download eBay sniping program Auction Sentry. Marvel at application's ability to automatically place winning bid on item 30 seconds before auction close. Configure winning snipe on lusty guitar and cackle in pre-emptive glee.
   
   
8. Win guitar.
   
   
9. Send following message to Strummer69:
   
   
   
   
   
   
10. Take receipt of guitar at work from long haired death metal rocker that smells of Vicks Vapour Drops. Impress pink haired ladies at the front desk with less than adequate rendition of Stairway to Heaven. Receive no reply from substandard rival. Live happily, guitar playingly, ever after.
    

From May 2007, no chance I could afford this now.

Moshzilla

It was no co-incidence that the day I finally realised the true potential of the internet coincided directly with me stumbling across the moshzilla phenomenon. Although there was a secret shame in finding someone else's complete and utter humiliation funny, it was, never the less, pretty fuckin funny. It transcended funny. It had to power to render adversarial work colleagues temporary allies, with your sworn enemy ambling meekly up to your screen to see what all the fuss was about. I've found that these internet moments are rare, and should be treasured for their puerile purity. After all, life is fleeting; infamy is ageless.

The repercussions on my life after this event were all too predictable. For a while, no-one could get much sense out of me, and any photos that happened to stray into my neck of the woods were immediately seized and then painstakingly grilled for potential photoshopping opportunities.

My boss at the Art Gallery Craig, knowing better, should never have asked me to backup his recent holiday snaps from Thailand. That's like asking a glue sniffing addict to to be captain of the scrapbook team. My eyes saw red. Not being able to stop my primal urges, I grabbed the following image and went to work.



I considered not sending the result in a company wide email for about 5 seconds. Then I got distracted by a butterfly that landed on the mouse, causing the click to engage and in turn sending the email. "Oh well," I thought "At least I can always blame the butterfly."

157 people in four departments received the following email:

To: All Staff
From: David Price (Art Gallery Society of NSW)
Subject: Up, up, and a Craig.

Amazingly, the whole affair was deemed a hilarious caper, and I was crowned First Class Photoshop Artisan for that week. It may have helped that my boss had a bit of a thing for The Man of Steel, but this could only be attributed to blind, dumb luck considering that I found it out after I could have been fired.

I wish I could say that my bosses also had a pet interest in experimental cryogenics. That could have saved me so much explaining two weeks later when I actually did get the boot. Live and learn I guess.

I still don't get it

Waking up in San Sebastian to find the day outside a bit overcast, we quickly decided against going to the beach. Ryan and I filled in the morning doing the obligatory internet and email thing before quickly getting bored and deciding that we needed to get out of the house. By this stage, our host Morten had groggily entered the lounge room and after a very involved eye rubbing session, suggested we go for a drive. His football training didn't start until five after all. We had wanted to go and check out the Guggenheim museum in nearby Bilbao, and since we did not mind at all being chauffeured around in his brand new, football club provided Mercedes, we happily accepted. To Bilbao sir, and don't spare the mustard!

The Basque region of Spain really is jaw droppingly beautiful. Green rolling hills, pine trees everywhere, and those little tunnels that go through mountains like the ones you see in model train sets.



I tried to take about a million photos, but only too late did I realise that I had stupidly set the camera to 'incredibly blurry'. I should have had it set to 'Awesome pictures to make your friends back home jealous', but what can I say, it's an easy mistake to make.

Truth be told, I didn't really know a great deal about the Guggenheim. If i was asked during Trivial Pursuit two weeks ago in what country it was located, I would have answered 'Germany', quickly followed by a 'Well it sounds German!' remark to deflect any patronising guffaws. After taking in it's stainless steel kitchen-esk exterior, my first impression was that the architect was a bit of a prankster - reason being that the stairs leading to the entrance are the kind whose length is configured so perfectly that they result in being uncomfortably long. You even have to do a feet switcharoo halfway up to give each leg a turn at climbing. Strange thing to notice, hey? It's true, we are a culturally deficit mob of yokels.


But at least we are street wise enough to be visibly afraid when flower-cyclone death is imminent.

The museum was exhibiting an artist called Anselm Keifer that I'd seen before while working at the Art Gallery of NSW, so I immediately began gloating to my comrades at having an extensive taste in cultivated arts. Of course, as soon as I was asked for further information about him I had to reluctantly back down from my effrontery, due to knowing absolutely nothing about him. We were finding it difficult to understand his work too; large metal-bolstered concrete stair structures secured one by one up a high wall. An engineering marvel to be sure, but quite unintelligible to the likes of the yokel party.

Looking at one of his massive, 20ft high collage works, I started to imagine what his neighbours must think when he began putting one of these things together. "Oh Anselm," they'd chuckle, shaking their heads and having another sip of their morning coffee. "What in Gods name are you creating now? Hey Anselm! Quit fucking around and go and trim that hedge like we asked you last week!"

After reading one of the descriptions posted on the wall, I discovered that he lives as a hermit in an old converted factory in Barjac, France. The place has numerous interconnecting warehouses, living quarters and greenhouses that he uses to create these massive constructions. The place has got loads of secret tunnels and rooms connecting the different areas. He has spent the last decade fashioning the place into a living piece of art, piling up fragile concrete structures and letting the elements do the rest. Calls himself an alchemist. Cooool.


I'd probably go a little bit loopy in that environment. I'd start wearing a 24-7 monocle, developing a cackle, and answering the door saying things like "So doctor! We meet again, at last!"

Not ol' Anselm though. He's still keeping it real, driving his big construction cranes (I assume, otherwise he's just REALLY strong) and waxing lyrical about life.


The book, the idea of a book or the image of a book, is a symbol of learning, of transmitting knowledge.. I make my own books to find my way through the old stories.

-- Anselm Kiefer

Don't look.. I'm hideous!

Inspired as I was by the lovely Miss Bloom's foray into pop art inspired cartoonery, I thought it wise to show my own efforts in contorting the public image of myself:


That's right, read it and weep suckers. The story behind this frankensteinal monstrosity was that I was attempting to demonstrate to my friend Leah the intricacies of a particular outfit I had planned for a friend's engagement party. What's that? Well yes, OF COURSE it was during work hours, as if I would have bothered otherwise?

Anyway, I suppose it had the desired effect. She immediately printed it out onto A3 paper and stuck it up in her team's shared cubicle space, thereby turning it into their unofficial mascot. For all I know my poor characture is currently sporting 3 cheap plastic darts sticking out of his obliviously smiling cranium.

Everything happens for a reason I guess.

Creepy is relative says the stalker

Inspired by the oh-so-honest and thoroughly believable General Security Officers (GSOs) at the Art Gallery of NSW, my humble workplace over the last 9 months.

Simmy, our lovable front desk receptionist and I were having a loud discussion between cubicles this afternoon about who our favourite GSO was. Obviously the big smiley Islander guy was the hand-down winner, which met to rapturous agreement from the other girls around the office (note: we should really find out what his name is, he's totally in the crew).

Simmy then went on to talk about a run in she'd had with one of the other, not so affectionately thought of guards:



Simmy:
He cornered me in the loading dock for a conversation one day right. For some reason the subject of partners came up and he whips out his wallet to show me his 'new lady friend'. The picture he showed me was of a Japanese girl and it looked like it had been cut out of a magazine. There was some pink taffeta in there I think.

Davey:
You're kidding.

Simmy:
Nup. It was all misty and stuff, like they'd used Vaseline on the lens or something.

Davey:
soooo... i'm thinking... a Vogue from the 80s? He was at the doctors, for shizzle.

Simmy:
He looks at me and goes, "Lovely, isn't she?"

Davey:
...

Simmy:
I'm serious.

Davey:
Next time, grab the nearest empty KFC box, point to the colonel and say: "This is MY new boyfriend. Lovely isn't he? I've been trying to get him to lose the beard though. I think it makes him look so 'fictional'."