Reminder

Shit's been getting kind of real lately, which has been super lame. In the midst of all the stress and horror and depression and angst you kind of forget the simple things that can really help. Like listening to music.

I HAVEN'T BEEN LISTENING TO MUSIC.

How did I not spot this??

Anyway, Oli downloaded Smith Westerns' Dye It Blonde for me, and seriously, within the first three seconds of the first track I remembered...

MUSIC IS AWESOME.

Really.

I feel better now.

Bitch; Please

Both Steven AND my brother Oli made posters for Bitch; Please.

(being our new band. Pretty sweet. We played at Gorgeous George almost a year ago, but are doing our first grown up gig this Friday at WEHQ (yay for acronyms!))

I decided to join the wagon and make one too, and out do them (naturally).

AND I did it in two minutes.

AND I cheated. The wire lettering was made by Steven when we started the band. The picture of the tiger is from Oli's calendar. But their combination... GENIUS!

Like vanilla and coke.
Or cheese and anything.



For tunes: Bitch; Please bandcamp, and the gig page on facebook.

YAY! See you there.

Do the Drew

When we were in Hamilton for rockquest national finals, we got interviewed by that Drew guy from C4. This was after a number of encounters with TV personnel, having had a mini-doco short thing made about our band in July (iiish?), and filming an episode for the Erin Simpson Show in August (I thiiiink). Overall, the process really told me a lot about how they go about making TV. From what I can assume, it's done quickly, efficiently, with as much forced emotion as possible, and yet with zero to no sentiment. These guys KNOW they're making disposable entertainment. And it's their job to churn it out, all with fake smiles and happy handshakes and best wishes.

It really demystified the whole process for me. I mean, the attitude they had resembled smugness, and yet they constantly put down their jobs. Like, they were aware that what they were doing was seen as exctiting, but like hell they were going to admit that. I dunno, it's really hard to judge their level of enthusiasm, to tell what isn't forced.

I felt sorry for Drew though. He tried soooo hard to be enthusiastic; like, fake smiling and laughing and asking us about our band name and stuff, which always delivers awkard responses from us (not his fault there).

I worry that this sort of happy veil is all these TV guys have got. What happened to the TV presenter people who were legitimately funny, and seemed to actually like their job/were good at it? Happiness is great, but it's not a substitute for humour. Aaah, well.

Anyways, here's an extremely awkward interview that proves none of my points. It's Drew vs. MGMT (he tried SO hard).

Makes Me Glad

I've been listening to The Magic Kids' album Memphis on repeat (WHAT??) for the past week during extreme arting sessions. It just fills me with painless happy happy glad times and washes away the hours of chair-sitting and neck-bending. They're all for the good times, and are promoters of the gf/bf, hand-holding idealogy that is oh-so addictive this time of year.

I found this video of them playing in a backyard somewhere with dozens of children. It makes me feel less worried about being in a band that children like (although, many of these kids seem to be crying). Kids love happy music. I love happy music. I am mostly a child anyway. Why worry about being badass? Let Mike Dirnt worry about that.

My Family Jumping!

We're happy!!!!

Crafts For Today

Today I made a frog. Its fucking legit. His name is Kim Fowley and he's a rock and roll legend who knows the score. And he can jump like a demon.

Whatch him jump!! (nb. scroll very fast)



I forged him out of my classics assignment task sheet. Oooooo catharsis.
And I took my sweet time, not because it was difficult. Just because I'm a champ and I earned it.

"Well spent Wednesday evening Callum!"

Why, thank you blog!

"You're welcome. now...Shouldn't you be doing you're art research?"

Quiet blog. I'm taking my moment of pride.

Its been very quiet.

Yeah I know, it's been months. Although I dont think I want to apologise. This is MY blog, and my bevy of readers now have learned the power of that fact. I have had quite a wonderful winter though. And it's almost over.

The cherry trees have started to blossom. I had a cherry tree in my backyard in Opawa growing up. Every year we'd try to remember to take a family photo under it when it blossomed. I think the initial idea was that you'd stack them up and flip through them like some cool Home Improvement homage. Played so many awesome games in that tree, when we were still small enough to think it was a big deal to climb up it. At one stage, this grape vine growing on the fence started growing all over the tree. We thought it was a grape tree. Got mad confused. Teachers laughed.

Old story, anyway... so winters almost over. And it was an extremely enjoyable one. Il go into detail with various stories and photos. For now, here are some highlights...

- Paige and I reaching our 6th, 7th and 8th month anniversaries, all celebrated accordingly.
- The holidays.
-Busking. More than once.
-Making a sick Vincent Price tshirt and then spilling coke on it.
-Buying my Campus A Low Hum ticket.
-Seeing, like, 800 movies. Because that's what you do in winter. Movie highlights include; ALL the Twilights in one weekend, TOY STORY 3, Dumbo, Iron Man 2 (HUGE let down)Once Upon A Time in the West, The Runaways... oh man... so many more.
-Forcing Paige to watch Monty Python
-COOKING (and being cooked) soo much food
-EATING (and feeding) soo much food.
-Spending ALL of my money.
-Callums Night of Extreme Challenges.
-Custard Bear winning chartfest, rockquest regionals and generally playing SICK GIGS!!(w/ Tono, Gigglepop, Die! Die! Die!) and generally being uber productive.
-Going to Blenhiem to play Dixie Music.
-Meeting PROPS BOY!
-Being meagrely productive in terms of school work.
-My 7th Form Formal, and subsequent celebrations.
-possibly having a career opportunity
-Finding some of my personal limitations.
-Figuring out my five year plan to the vaguest of standards.

There were plenty of lowlights, some of which aren't fit for remembering. But I'll do my best.

Heres to Spring!

In other news, my ipods broken. Sad face...

Bar Gig Bar - A Review

Dear The Press, heres a review for your reviews section in the paper on Fridays just before the movie photos and adverts and things. I think it will do just the tricket...

On Thursday (yes Thursday) the 13th of May 2010 I was really nervous sitting in my bedroom with Paige and Oli and Alex waiting for it to be late enough for us to go in the car to get to the bar in time for our gig. We waited for AGES. It was nine thirty by the time penisey texted me saying that they were on the way. So I ate a muffin and got in the car. Dad drove us there. In the car we listened to Yeah Yeah Yeahs songs to sike ourselves up. It worked. Alex and Paige walked us into Poplar Lane as I'd never been there before and would get lost if I tried to find it on my own or even with Oli. We just walked straight in! No bouncer or anything. I was relieved. Then we went into the band area room and met the sound guy named Mathew/Ben/Something I can't recall and he was real nice saying that I looked like freddy kruegar and started setting up mics. No one else was there but then Penisey was there and told me he got kicked out of home (SAD :(....) and Thom who was wearing SHOES!! which is a novelty for Thom. And others were there too but I dont know everyones names Im new. Then a surf band called Piha Rescue (geddit?) went up and set up on the stage and I got worried cause Jack said he was tired. He arrived and was all gc about it. His brother and my brother and their friends and my dad and jacks dad were all there to see us. We told them we were on next cause we were. Me and Thom danced to Piha and it was awesome. We did the Twist and had a "Play Fight" and bumped into this guy. They were all wearing sunglasses except for Ben Dodd. WHO is awesome as it happens and Penisey is started a band with him (GOSSIP!). Then they finished and we got to go up and play our songs (AWESOME!) We set up and got water and tuned our guitars and there were quite a few people at the bar including some friendly faces. We played pretty well. Olis guitar string broke two seconds into the first song! LOL! And the vocal mics were condensor mics which was pretty cool I guess. We played Fuck You Courtney, Safety Cheque, LPG Doesn't Grow On Trees Bro, Jessica, I Said To My Girl (She Looked Nice), Evergreen, and then we decided to finish, but Ben Dodd stuck his fluffy head in the window and said "play that Jazzy one" which we took to mean Cake, and so we did. It was well sick and everyone danced really well and clapped very loudly. It was very good fun and I was pretty tired as it was twenty to twelve. Paige seemed happy too which was awesome as Paige is wicked. Alex took photos (see below) for us which was nice of her. They came out topps. We didn't get to stay for Lonely Harris Club. But they were my favourites anyway. I was well gutted cause I heard they did a Strange Boys cover and I love them. I gave John a hug as we left though, and said thanks. He replied "Oh no worries. I really hope we go allright...Sorry for not dancing to your set. I'm not sure if I can play my guitar at the moment." But he did. I give the gig a wild 7 stars!! * * * * * * *

Photo Bear

Lovely Alex took some photos of our band playing our first bar gig and standing akwardly on some grass and in a tree. I got to scan them! It was mean! The gig was at GBM with Lonely Harris Club and Piha Rescue, two wickedly awesome bands. And I'm not just saying that because they gave us reason to stay up past 10 on a school night.

Disposables

Heres some of the photos taken off my disposable camera. It follows the days after my birthday and up until the eep a gig. Theres a real nice one of my parents. Thanks Alex for an awesome birthday present!





And yes. My birthday was as fun as it looks.

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...

Food Part Two

You know whats going on, so heres some photos and suchlike.

CHURROS!%!%!

P for PAIGE

Sooo much hot chocolate.... nummers.

We got bored and we had a load of hot hot oil left so we deep fried a banana. Yup. Deskinned and then BAM. Right in. Uber super delicious and yummy and melted and hot. Sprinkled with the cinnamon sugar.... IOFH'EJRJGNVoojf-87YypYPY8P9a*(Y............. try it.

Englourious Food Day

Oli found the Eye of Sauron in an apricot.

I've been getting into a really awesome food making mood of late. Probably one of the best possible moods you can be in, so we decided to make a day of it and cook recipes from my awesome Jamie Oliver cookbook I got for christmas. Yesterday we had an awesome food day with Paige and Georgia. We had high hopes and dreams and much hunger. Afterwards we left with warm-everything-belly. We consumed so much. It made me soo happy.

We made Jamie Olivers Mexican Breakfast for, uh, late brunch. Basically its this awesome tomato and chilli stew that you crack eggs into and poach them in the juices. Then you wrap it all up in a tortilla with cheese on top.

We used SOO many eggs.




Ahhh.......... man. That is some good looking tomato stew.

We ate it outside in the sun wearing gross looking hats and sunglasses. It was SOOO good. It was gooey and spicy and eggy and so warm and comforting and just... AHOFH"PHR#W. You have to try it.

Then we went on various excursions including shopping for ops and eating delicious spicy rice shit which name I cant remember. I do remember it being delicious. We also bought a bag of green chilies for the next recipe we had to try out. Which was also jamies HOT! CHOCOLATE AND CHURROS! (nb. the exclamation mark after HOT means chilli. And Churros are like mini round donut balls. Inescapably delicious (when cooked all the way through) and perfect for the dunking.

to be continued....

Ready? Okay.

I'm standing on a bench in front of a fire surrounded by people I don't really know. It's very dark wearing my sunglasses at this time of night, and the people I was with before don't seem to be in visual distance of me. But at that exact moment I don't really care at all. I jump up and down ectatically. The euphoric glee that pulses through me is let out in my scream; "I'm on a fucking bench!!! I'm on a fucking bench!!" I scream, over and over. Eli would later tell me that he heard me, and recognised my lameness. Everyone around the fire starts screaming Bob Marley for a second time. They are all much older then me, and I don't know any of the words, so I get bored and jump down from the bench. I remember there was supposed to be a nude swim on the beach. I spin round far too fast, my head taking a moment to catch up with me, and head in the general direction of the sound of waves and singing. My senses are bursting. I am utterly excited and petrified by the visuals that I thought I must be sending through my outfit at the time. My hood is up, my glasses on. A cardboard HAPPY NEW YEAR! tiari perches on my head. In my right hand I furiously wave a red glowstick. In my left is my torch, slowly running out of battery. I use it to lead down the sandy path and away from the deadly dangerous tents. In between my teeth I bite on a bent new years hooter, slightly broken from over blowing. It screams painfully as I run up and down the beach. My aim is to frighten and to entertain all that I come across. I flail and blow, stumbling in the sand. The beach is completely lit by the full Blue Moon. I can see the water quite clearly, and the forlorn overlooking adults wearing tivas and headlamps. They pity me, or my absent parents. I hoot at them angrily, then laugh. With no nude swimmers in sight, I head for the water. Bare footed I run straight in. The water is warmer than then the cold dark sand, and frothy with salt. I splash through it, giggling. A calm wades through me. This moment is a new moment. A happy one. And now, it can never be replaced by pain or melancholy or sad indifference.

I miss my friends, so I run back into the trees to find them hooting into the air with much celebration.

2009 in Drawings

At the begining of this year, me and Eli and Angus and Henry and this brilliant idea to start designing and making and selling wiked tshirts. It couldn't fail. We had Eli and myself to design (I even got us both sketchbooks to fill up (which I only completed about a month ago)), Angus was in promotion and shit, so he started teaching himself binary and html and shite so he could make a website. And we also had Henry as king of finance. We even had a meeting where he drew a graph. And we even had a name... (care of Eli, purveyor of great names) ...

White Sweater Zombie

Bam. But being boys we got distracted by girls (angus and eli) and school (henry) and... uh... art? (me)... and sort of just stopped working on it. We still all believe that it will happen eventually.
SOO... heres some drawings from my full sketchbook which I just happened to photograph this morning.