———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–
LapTopping – The Bit Long, Official E-zine of The Bedroom Philosopher
———————————————————————–
———————————————————————–
ISSUE 57
Tuesday 20 February
Estimated Reading Time: 11:49
www.myspace.com/thebedroomphilosopher
This episode of LapTopping is rated ‘W.R.’ for Worth Reading.
———————————————————————–
LT BIRTHDAYS!
Happy Birthday Kurt Cobain 39 today!
Happy Birthday Phil Buckle (Southern Sons) 47 today!
Happy Birthday Drew Barrymore 31on Wednesday!
Happy Birthday Anna Knight 24 on Sunday! xxx
———————————————————————–
PHILOSOPHER SEEKS BAND
In a bid to do justice to the musical diversity of the forthcoming album, I am currently trying to gather a consortium of like-minded mis-fits to form The Bedroom Philosopher and the Pooglet Three. The main position vacant is drummer. Must be able to handle all forms of somewhat out of time art-folk and occasional bit of rocky stuff. Brushes, sticks and mallets. One or two armed females preferred. If you could look as much like the drummer out of Lenny Kravitz’s ‘Are You Gonna Go My Way’ clip as possible that would be great. But seriously folks, I am also on the look out for a piano/synths practitioner, trumpeter, flautist, violinist, (if you could play all these instruments one man band style, that would save on travel) as well as a wide range of assorted talents, ranging from playing the bagpipes underwater, to mastering the harp in a spider costume. We also need ‘dancers’ ‘raffle monitors’ and someone who can rewire the game Operation so that they can play popcorn on it. Send brief, informal applications to me personally through the contact section of this site. Serious offers only.
———————————————————————–
FOLKSTAR THANKS
Massive props to all my peeps (by props I mean a blue squeaky shark and an orange flame wig) who voted for Folkstar in the Hottest 100. Despite your impassioned efforts and web-form smarts, Folkstar actually came 53, but was disqualified due to a drunken mishap in the Triple J foyer. All I can say is don’t break dance in elevators and can’t Kingsill take a joke? But seriously folks, after having the track evaluated by an online industry professional known affectionately as ‘Business Gus,’ I was informed that the song suffered from an acute case of ‘aheadofitstimeness’ and should be re-released in the summer of 2023, as the loss of the polar ice-caps will send the disaffected youth into a lo-fi dub-hop comedic spoken word single buying frenzy.
———————————————————————–
LAPTOPPING’S “SONG TO GET STUCK IN YOUR HEAD” OF THE DAY
Spin Doctors – Two Princes
“And If you wanna buy me flowers
Just go ahead, now
And if you like to talk for hours
Just go ahead, now.”
———————————————————————–
TOP FIVE NOT SO COOL ALTERNATIVES TO “You’re a sight for sore eyes” (best enjoyed when said in an old person’s voice)
5 – You’re a thought for a sore brain.
4 – You’re a smell for a sore nose.
3 – You’re a sound for sore ears.
2 – You’re a touch for sore fingers.
1 – You’re a taste for a sore mouth.
———————————————————————–
PEOPLE ARE STRANGE, BUT YOU ARE STRANGER!
From Emilie Zoey Baker
Overheard by a cafe owner in Clifton Hill:
'There seems to be a shortage of red current jelly in the world at the moment'
***
From Maria, Perth.
Emo girl with extremely long fringe walks past me and a group of pop girls eating lunch.
Pop Girl 1: Did you see the fringe?
Pop Girl 2: Nah.
Pop Girl 3: Yeah! (putting on a 'beatnik' accent) She hides from the world, she is her fringe…her and her fringe have become one. If she can't see people, people can't see her.
***
From Mileta Rien, Melbourne.
Overheard at Better Read Than Dead bookshop in Newtown:
Shop assistant: Do they like science fiction?
Xmas shopper: Yeah, I think so; they're Christians.
Have you overheard some memorable conversation of late? Perhaps witnessed a member of the ‘peeps’ doing something comical or weird? Let Bev know at [email protected]. Include your home city or town.
************************************************************************
LAPTOPPING INANIMATE OBJECT BEREAVEMENTS NOTICES
************************************************************************
*****
SICK
*****
From Miles Alterator, of Newcastle.
Serious injury report.
Our healthy 4-slot toaster sparked itself to death last week leaving only 1.5 slots operational – the remaining slots are in a critical condition. Let this be a harsh reminder to all the other appliances in the house that electrical safety is paramount in the smooth and safe operation of our house. Any disregard of the policy will not be tolerated.
Disciplinary Notice.
In the same week the microwave started randomly turning itself on and off regardless of any food being inside it. All the residents of the house have concluded that the microwave should be disciplined accordingly:
1) The microwave must cease the random operations immediately,
2) The microwave must attend educational seminars on operational discretion and the responsibilities associated with,
3) The microwave must attend and actively participate in role playing exercises designed around the experiences of the operators (let the microwave take a walk in our shoes),
4) The microwave must attend a peer-support program with other past-offending microwaves in hope of being influenced to avoid going down the 'wrong path'
*************************************
WE PRAY FOR THEIR RECALIBRATION
*************************************
Do you have an inanimate object that is ailing or has passed on? Let the
LapTopping community ease your suffering by emailing Bev with your location:
[email protected]
************************************************************************
GET A WRIGGLE ON GOOGLET!
Here is the top ten searches for my website in the month of January.
1 – bedroom philosopher 177 – 8%
2 – the bedroom philosopher 155 – 7%
3 – im so postmodern 69 – 3.1%
4 – im so post modern lyrics 68 – 3%
5 – i m so postmodern 49 – 2.2%
6 – sandra sully nude 45 – 2%
7 – voice stunt 45 – 2%
8 – im so postmodern lyrics 45 – 2%
9 – i m so postmodern lyrics 33 – 1.5%
10 – i m so post modern lyrics 32 – 1.4%
I’m not sure if the Sandra Sully Nude says more about the general public or my website. If anyone has any idea what ‘voice stunt’ would be, I’d love to know.
Several phrases people have typed into Google to land on my website lately:
“wombles crockery”
“dingo bum bag”
“inappropriate hug josh”
“buggety bee lyrics”
“novelty clothing blacktown”
“stopped using shampoo forum”
“cricket bat that plugs into tv”
“undercut hairstyle lost bet”
“name of a song on triplej jjj”
“weetbix bus shower”
“nude or naked or topless or bikini sandra sully”
“rock stars in speedos”
“how to ask bev out”
“table tennis aluminium sven”
“feeding budgies multigrain bread”
“chinese symbol that means poo”
“gay skisuit”
“lesbians in yogo”
“my first easter shirt”
“thankyou-two words or one?”
———————————————————————–
LAPTOPPING MEDIA WATCH
Church of Hope promotional leaflet. Melbourne City. November 5th 2006.
I was handed this leaflet while walking past Flinders Street station in Melbourne. The first thing I noticed about it was the heading, loud and proud in Arial bold 14 point – “YOUR SPECIAL.” Now, the leaflet went on to say such things as “No person is ever a mistake/You were not just born by chance (God knew of you)/No situation is ever impossible without god.” As I sat on the tram still analysing the text, what I wanted more than anything was a miracle to happen, and that miracle involved not an apostle, but an apostrophe falling from the sky and planting itself in the correct place in the title text. YOU’RE SPECIAL. Check it out Church of Hope, while completely open to the concept of a spiritual force in my life – I daresay I cannot get out of bed in the morning with the thought that the omnipotent creator of the universe has an achilles heel of basic grammar! If the great lord works at the Eternal Times, then he’d better be careful if Satan is the copy editor – in this titanic struggle of punctuation, perhaps the creator could take a lesson from Noah, who was the master of making sure he at least included a second draft!
DO YOU HAVE A MEDIA WATCH? Send us the link or hardcopy and we’ll sort it out. For more info contact Bev at [email protected]
———————————————————————–
TIME IS CHEESE AND MOUSE IS HUNGRY!
Saskia Moore alerts us to perhaps the most troubling film clip of all time. Fans of Brett Lee may want to rethink ‘taking the new ball.’ Fans of…anything, may want to do the same.
This issue, I’d like to plug a couple of unique local acts who I think are rather special. This first is the Nick Drake meets Caribou psychedelic art-folk of Melbourne chap Kes:
http://www.myspace.com/kesband
Perhaps you may enjoy the Brian Jones Town Massacre meets The Shinsness 60’s psych-rock of Belles Will Ring.
(LapTopping accepts no responsibility for music nerd angst caused by its hasty and one-dimensional pigeon holing. Go moan about it on Pitchfork mofo’s.):
http://www.myspace.com/belleswillring
Got a tip-off for some e-nuggets? Let us know: [email protected]
———————————————————————–
A GIGGLE OF GIGS (Melbourne & Adelaide)
• Tuesday 20th February. Playing at Latrobe University, Bendigo. Show starts 7pm. Price unknown! Entertainment guaranteed.
• Sunday 25th February. Appearing at Melbourne’s premier prog-performance evening The Oyster Club, hosted by the insatiably bookish Asher Treleaven. $8. 7pm. (Apologies to anyone who came to see me last time – I had to retire ill. Not in a hip-hop way, but a genuinely fluey manner.)
• Wednesday 28th February. Lunchtime outdoor gig at RMIT in the city. Approximately 12pm. Free. May also include Dan Kelly if they can get him. I started this rumour.
• Wednesday 7th March. MCing the Great Big Comedy Evening at The Laundry. Johnston St Fitzroy. $12. 8:30pm. Including such acts as ‘others.’
• Friday 9th March. Supporting the mysterious ‘Spooky Man’s Chorale’ at Northcote Town Hall. They’re from the Blue Mountains and sing in harmony about tools. Check out their website here: http://www.spookymen.com.au 7:30pm. $15/$12.
• Monday 19th March – Wednesday 21st March. Adelaide Fringe Festival – Bosco Theatre. Located in the Garden Of Unearthly Delights. This will be an hour long gig. $20/$15. 9:30pm. You can book tickets here: http://tix.adelaidefringe.com.au/ticketing/EventDetails.aspx?EventGuid=12bcd11f-efb3-44c5-b8f5-4a791747fe27
• Saturday 24th March – 180 Seconds Of Heaven or Hell. Appearing with twenty other Melbourne artists including The Town Bikes and C.W. Stoneking, all doing three minute acts. North Melbourne Town Hall. 7:30pm. $20/$15.
———————————————————————–
STORYTIME (Brought to you by “Cryogenic Tweezerphone Fondling In G minor.” The new one woman contemporary movement piece from multi arts council grant winning artaturg Mingilina Swangrind. Life. Power. Politics. Latex. Hate’s a fusion and your giving birth to yourself in the spaces between love and time.)
BIG DAY OUT REPORT 2007.
SYDNEY
Take your average uni bar night, times it by fifty, cross it with a speedway racing carnival, swap the cars for bands and insert the flaming wreckage of a cargo plane enroute from the Australian flag factory and you’re still not close to the clumsy, seething, wonky eyed hormonal rampage of this warped rock’n’roll human diorama of farm mice lurking beneath an Olympic sized piece of corrugated iron. The concept of cramming 80, 000 odd people into the Sydney Big Day Out is akin to pouring a jar of hundreds and thousands on Castle Grayscull.
The gig itself went rather well. Despite being promised that I would be in the program by organisers, I wasn’t. I apologise to those who struggled to find out where or when I was playing. I was perched up in a large inflatable black and white tubular archway arena tent called Mondo Exotica. The space was mainly used as a place to buy alcoholic slushies, listen to lounge music and ogle at cabaret acts empowering themselves. The crowd present were receptive and appreciative, even to my awesomely tailored material such as “what does the Australian flag have in common with Australian idol – a bunch of stars that offends everyone.” If only there was a Pulitzer for wordplay.
Musical highlights included Hot Chip (who fortunately didn’t play in the tiny caravan along with Aussie hip hop duo Dinkum Dogs) whom I watched glumly by myself as my friend Leigh was catching The Streets. Ergo B Bag and his band of all-action all stars put on what was the greatest show I’ve ever seen. Fifteen members. All wearing grey lycra 80’s aerobic showbiz outfits. Three keyboards. Five dancing girls on the frontlines. A separate podium for Ergo, who was towelled off, massaged and then re-introduced at the start of every song. Think glam 70’s Eurovision meets casio-fuelled indie-ADHD rock eisteddfod. Check them at: http://www.myspace.com/ebbag
The rest of the day was spent in a nebulous of suspended animation, schizophrenic sound crossovers and kaleidoscopic pre-climactic skin. I caught the ends of pinprick star stadium sets, my ears nibbling on the moth-eaten blanket of watered down hollow-dome acoustics. Toilet trips were episodic voids of dodgem limbo, where I towed the line between negotiating the urinal, and holding my brown cord flares up out of the syphilis slime.
Highlight was a random guy running up to me and asking if I’d seen Will. I replied deadpan – ‘yeah I think he was in the middle of the crowd at hot chip.’ He laughed and said ‘I like your style mate.’ Regards to Leigh Rigozzi for putting up with me.
MELBOURNE
I had a much better time in Melbourne, so naturally, there’s less to write. Being co-dependant, the presence of my lady-partner and best mates helped immensely. The Melbourne concert has half the people to Sydney and the layout is superior, it’s one big sun drenched sprawling boheme paddockery. Personal space was on sale for $3 per cubic metre, but seriously, what a lame novelty, worst NIES scheme ever. I did buy a My Chemical Romance showbag, but all it had was a stick on fringe and razorblades, and as if I was going to shave at a festival!
My set was just fine. Despite the appearance of a mysterious and completely unbooked street poet who was swearing in rhyming couplets about Collingwood getting up before me. I did about five encores in my fifteen minute set, and at one point said ‘I’m So Post Modern I refuse to play this song live, so just f*ck off!’ which I must say is uncharacteristically antagonising, even by my standards, but didn’t the audience love being pushed around! Fans can expect a lot more Lou Reed style ‘showmanship’ from me this year. It was good to play ‘Strange Piece of Music (Stuff’s Gone Bung)’ which included one of the more awkward hands in the air swaying moments in showbiz history. Thanks to the five uncertain twenty-something’s who joined in.
Musically, the tail end of Dan Kelly’s set was one of the highlights. I’ve decided he’s my new rival as I saw him on Spicks and Specks and we have similar glasses. (It used to be Josh Pyke but he was featured in that i-tunes ad so I figured he could have me rubbed out) Peaches went bananas. She was standing on top of her drumkit, getting one of her leather clad man-helpers to hold the guitar up for her when she wanted to play it. But points on the day go to The Sleepy Jackson, who I’ve been a massive fan of for ages, and stand by Lovers as my favourite Australian album of all time. Luke Steele was a stylematic rockfuelled staccatobot, kicking his leg out and making swooshing noises in the microphone. They even had a mysterious girl in a white dress dropping 808 beats from a laptop.
At one point we got some German sausages for dinner, and my girl Anna was working the communal tomato sauce pump and she whacked it and it all squirted over my pants, and suddenly there was silence, and I realised that Muse had stopped playing, and the entire 20 odd thousand punters were looking at me, and suddenly I just threw my hands up and said ‘anyone for sauce?’ and everyone just burst into laughter and suddenly Peaches was there and she said ‘you’re alright kid’ and we high fived and then I crowd surfed all the way onto stage and Muse let me play the guitar solo for one of their songs and even though I’d never heard it I just winged it and it was awesome.
THE END.
———————————————————————–
LAYTOPING IS MISPELLED, AND FREE! WHAT A GREAT GIFT IDEA, AND IT’LL CUT YOUR ENERGY BILLS IN HALF! SEND IT TO A FRIEND!
To be added to this Ezine check out dev2.topfive.com.au/ and go to the LapTopping page.
Last time someone cried: Tully – “Last night at four in the morning, arriving home from work having been reading Murakami in my breaks and lamenting the near-hopelessness of it all.”
Back issues of LapTopping can be witnessed and commented on at dev2.topfive.com.au/
To be removed from this Ezine send an email to Bev in Admin at:
[email protected] with the subject line “Clarity starts at home.”
****************************************************************************
This email is grouse so don’t muck with it or Merv’ll have your guts for e-garters. Try not to copy it and that or it frigs up the server and Trisha only dishes up mash and snags between 6 and 7 cos she doesn’t want to miss her programs. It’s all confidential just between you and me yeah, so don’t go snitchin that I sent you this and if anyone asks you, I bought the computer from cash converters but the serial number was already scratched off cos that’s what happens when they’re ex-school computers so it’s totally legit cos my cousin works at a school and he gets them for free.
On behalf of myself and whoever else wanders into shot, I’d like to dedicate this whole thing to the past, you know who you are, and if you don’t then I mean you Terry and they were my footy cards you ferret. This was made possible by the kind getting together of ideas and that and just cos I didn’t finish year ten doesn’t mean I didn’t cry when I watched dancer in the dark. I cried cos I was supposed to get jackass three but they mucked up the dvd’s, although I did reckon it was hilarious when she dropped that typewriter on that bloke. Crazy times. Yeah, so it’s all above board and if the savings and loans bloke calls then just delete this or stick it in your nudey folder or something.
****************************************************************************
DON’T FORGET –
“And If you wanna buy me flowers
Just go ahead, now
And if you like to talk for hours
Just go ahead, now.”