Declan vs. Himself

Back in Christchurch for the week, I spent Saturday afternoon making silly movies with my cousin on my cellphone. Turns out it's the funnest thing in the world. After being initially pretty suspicious, he got so excited about it.

This is the first one we made, with Declan playing both roles.



Then after we finished that one, while taking my puppy Fritz for a walk, we came up with another idea. This was was all Declan's vision. There's an elaborate sequel involved with a character named "Dr. Zarcophagus", who has a snake that comes out of his chest. But we only had time to make Part 1.


Declan declared himself "Okay with being famous," and allowed me to put the videos on YouTube. Can't wait for the sequel.

And just as an extra bonus movie for the weekend, I made my first viral-cute-puppy-video with our dog Fritz.

Clark Spaggeerg's Truth Hunt

Back in 2009 or something, Oli and I, on a whim, promised our brother Sam that we would make a film about his life for his 21st. He forgot about this. So did we.

About a week before his 21st birthday we remembered this insane idea, and simultaneously brainstormed this preposterous idea to play it like an expose documentary mystery film. And his birthday party was that weekend.

We managed to cobble together enough footage to form this film, and I've finally uploaded it for the interwebs to see. I actually love this character so much, and we're in talks of making something more out of it. But I'll talk about that later.

In the meantime, here's Clark Spaggeerg.

(sorry Sam). 

I Moved/I Movied

We Are House

My parents are in the process of building their dream home. It has really been a long time coming. When it was initially designed, all three of us kids were living at home. Now, Oli and I may only get a couple months in it before we move away to bigger things. But I know it's going to be the perfect place to come back home to. And I'm still getting my own room.

Anyway, we're at the stage where its finally looking like a house. It has an almost-roof and everything! It seems they really started making progress when Oli and I stopped pretending to be labourers (read "getting-in-the-way-ers) and got different jobs that we could actually do. So last Tuesday I took Paige to see it in all it's skeletal construction-site glory.

(*click on photos for a better view)


This is the view from the front driveway. To the left is the almost-garage, and to the right of that is the almost-front entrance way. Above the garage is a sweet alcove like space which will one day be utilised as a band/(wild) rumpus room.

This is a photo of Paige standing in my parents almost-bedroom.


Here, Paige is making use of the almost-roof by sticking her head through it.

This is Adrian, my ex-manager. He's up very high, isn't he? Hahaha... He knows what he's doing, don't worry. That almost-roof doesn't stand a chance!


This is a cool photo. Its Paige crouching inside my closet in my very own almost-bedroom. Yeah, I know, but Adrian assures me that when the house is finished it won't have such a draft.


And here, in all its autumnal beauty, is the view from my bedroom window. I love it. Second stories man! It is a vast improvement on my current view: a seedy overgrown tennis court through a chain-link fence.

"One day son, all this will be yours!"

Birthday Party

I just realised I never told you about my birthday. It was ages ago (February 16th), but I recently got back my photos from the photo guy man thing developer place so I thought now is as good a time as any to fill you in on the greatest birthday ever.

This year, our birthday fell on a Tuesday. Amazingly, it coincided with our Bitch, Please practices for the 'Eeep a Gig' gig. It was Tuesday, and beautiful and sunny. I got off school an hour early than everyone else (which I tend to do on Tuesdays) and walked all the way to dog log park. Not that long, really, but Im trying to make a story out of this. When I arrived, toting guitar in hand, Georgia and Steven were sitting waiting, along with Paige and Alex! Awesome! AND they had a wiked pile of presents!! Apparently they had made a day out of doing birthday prep stuff for Oli and I. It was so exciting. I was giggling with glee the whole afternoon. I wasn't allowed the presents until Oli arrived, but I did get given my card from Paige. It was, and still is, the greatest present I have ever ever been given. It was hand made with copious amounts of cellotape and had dinosaurs and tape and stars and felts... Im giggling describing it. It sits now, pride of place, on my bookshelf next to my Lyttleton Idol hat!! Most auspicious (?). We then spent time writing homework for Alex because she's still in school and everything (much like me, but she complains more (although has reason to. Im just angsty)).

When Oli arrived we got to dig into our awesome pile of presents. Mine included: more cards! a choooodie!!!! (which was actually a card, not a present) a disposable camera (photos to follow) !!!! DINOSAURSS!!! LOS CAMPESINOS!!! WATERCOLOURS!!! HUMOUROUS COMICS!!! And other things... i think. They were all really wrapped very nicely (which I love) and had my name on all of them. Oli got nice presents too... But I cant remember what they were... it was over two months ago.

And then we sung songs in the park and jumped around and put on each others clothes and took humourous photos of one another and experienced general merriment really. Best birthday ever.

That night we went to Winnie Bagos for tea. I brought Paige and that was when she got to meet more of my enormous family. She did very well not to get overwhelmed and die from all the attention. Luckily, it was my birthday, so I generously helped her with some of it. We split a pizza... Half smoked chicken cranberry and brie, half ROAST DINNER. Yes. Complete with roasted veggies like pumpkin and potatoes and kumura and gravy.... OH YES. So delicious I wept. I got some really nice presents as well, from my family. It was a very nice occasion. I even got a beer. I got some really nice presents from my family. Sam gave me and Oli an Arj Barker Twin Pack (lolz) which was awesome, so we went back to our place with ma and pa and paige and grandpa and watched disk one, drank tea, ate carrot cake (YUM! Thanks mum!) and soaked in general merriment. I think it was a pretty great way to turn 17.

Il post the photos up next. They're film, so Il have to scan them. I hope that works. If it doesn't... uh... Il draw shitty representatives on Microsoft Paint.

Holidays

So the first term went all right. But all in all it was school, wasn't it? Oh, I did have the production (being West Side Story) and that was pretty awesome. Wicked fun all the way through, and the after party was quite memorable. I brought Paige. Yeah, I bring her everywhere now. Awesome, I know. She even came to Easter with our family (didn't she do well?) with declans and photos and foood and chocolate. After that it was pretty much the holidays where all life is real and happy and good. So we decided to go to thoms birthday party and make him turn 18. It was good fun.

Holiday activities include; hanging out with Paige way too much; cooking (mashed potatoes (twice), salsa, indian, mexican breakfast (for dinner), pasta out of thin air etc etc....etc); eating said food; drinking responsibly; sexy parties; sleeping... oh so much sleep; gig wenting (sidewalk meese, rackets, and others....happy birthday georgia by the by...); singing; watching films (finally make paige watch Superbad and Dirty Dancing... a couple of my favourites); anniversaring (bookaramaing... as well as duck feeding, hand holding, park kissing, bagel eating, movies watching, food eating.. all the good things); fort building (ROMG!); homework avoiding; bike riding; walking; room cleaning; new queen size bed assembling; napping in said queen size bed too much; and more things which probably come up in these photos...

Apologies

Im sorry for not posting in like 6 days or something. I know all of you guys (being in the near hundreds) are so worried. But I've just been having too much fun doing far too many fun things to tell you all about. Which is a shame really. But to be honest I'd rather keep doing fun things than spend hours typing about them to you. This may prove an horrendous oversite, when in years to come I forget everything, I have to come back and read this blog to remember, theres all these gaps. That would suck. Through this fact I have decreed that blogs are much more interesting if written by depressed people with occasional spasms of fun than by people that have far too much fun and no time. The End.

In other news, Paige and I are now officially a thing (facebook never lies, children). I know, cool huh? She's kind of real awesome. We have wicked times too often, and shes probably to blame for my lack of posts. But more on that later...

In other other news, we almost got mugged. By a small ginga child. Now, when I say small, he claimed to be 16, but his height suggested 9. He was most fearsome though. And his friend new muay thai (forgive the spelling) apparently, although Adrejas (??) later doubted this call due to the fact that its all elbows and knees, and he was waving fists at me... (FISTS??). So here's what happened... (continued in my next post).

Yesterday, I introduced Paige to my family (bar Sam who is indeed moved out). We cooked random hash and pork stuff as well as steamed broccoli and it was awesome (even though it brunt onto the bottom of the pan). Plus, because it didn't really count as food, we could cover it in sauce and mayo and shit. Mum had us eat at the table which was odd, probably to impress Paige. Having your mum wanting to impress your girlfriend through domestic normality is always a good sign.

Heres some photo portraits...

1. me by paige

2. paige by me (easily the best photo)

3. oli by mum

4. mum by oli

I think I may be going deaf...

It's not that bad. It happens to everyone/anyone who plays in a band and goes to poorly mixed and overtly ouch inducing live shows and listens to music very loudly on headphones. But im not complaining.



I'd much rather be deaf before im 21 then listen to music at a reasonable volume.



But the deafer I get, the louder I have to turn up the music to make up for it.



Whenever I play someone music off my mp3 they go "WOOAH, turn it DOWN! Are you trying to kill me??!"



Im not trying to kill them.



My ears rang for ten minutes today for no reason.



I dont want my ears to ring for no reason.



Now, I wear earmuffs at band practice.



On a related note, I told my History of Art Class that my dad assembles earmuffs for a day job. He's probably assembled most of the earmuffs in the South Island for the past 15 years. All the big earmuff companies get their earmuffs manufactured at the factory in Christchurch my dad works in. He's really good. In fact, he probably assembled the earmuffs in your garage.



My dads really an architect.

NB. Not really my dad... Its an illustration.