Two days ago i was in London, for a one night stopover for work to learn some stuff that i need to teach some people in Hong Kong next month. What happened? We went out for a few drinks and the person who was supposed to teach me never made it in the next day. I should be fine right? So i had a normal day at work and was supposed to meet a mate for a beer then hang out in the business class lounge just to see how the other side live. Fast forward to when i’m waiting for the aforementioned friend and i decide to double-check my printout to see how much time we have to drink. Turns out i’d been looking at the arrival time. Time to get the fuck out of dodge.

Fast forward a bit further an i’m scrambling for sleep at home with the promise of a late shift the following day beckoning, and only two more days till my Mum arrives for three weeks of travel through the Scottish Highlands and visiting the relo’s in Austria. I awake to a phone call from my Sister to say that Mum has broken her leg on a train and the doctors are refusing to let her travel.

My mind goes into overdrive. I have three main options. A) Cancel my holidays and go into work to help out the guys with their new roll-out plans… B) Keep my holidays and do the things i had booked with Mum anyway and fill in the gaps with some trips to Old Trafford or something…or C) Cancel everything and high-tail it to Oz…

No-brainer!

So now i’m sitting on a plane with the sudden realisation that i will be home in a day or so… Was there a board meeting at Qantas at some stage where some young upstart thought it would be a good idea to enrich the on-board entertainment radio channels with intermittent static to give the effect of Vinyl? If so it appears he was overruled by some geriatric who decided the gramophone needed a comeback…seriously..what the fuck? The movie channels are fine.

I have to warn you about my writing style at the moment though. I’m easily influenced by what i do, read, write and see, when it comes to creating my own work. Look at my accent…this is not a conscious effort on my part..this is just how it happens…like a Lufthansa cancellation policy…this is just how it is. Whatever i read or watch seems to influence how i tend to write. So keep in mind i’ve been watching mainly Family Guy every night before falling asleep. Anyone who gets a chance to read my journal can probably pick the time-frame when i was reading Kurdt’s journals.

After 5 beers and two red wines, Hot Tub Time Machine is a great movie. Only time will tell if i was swayed by the bottle…John Cusack is good. Good. The best adjective i have at my disposal at this time. Now I’m watching the A-team and keeping the people to my left and right awake with my ultra-backlit screen.

I’m finding myself increasingly sympathising with the fat nerdy characters in movies…Alan from The Hangover is my idol..but the fat kid from Hot Tub Time Machine and Kick Ass is holding his own in the stakes for my undying partiality. Third movie in a row…The Green Zone. Seriously..currency plates? Haven’t i seen this before? I don’t even think this was a movie…it may have just been an episode of Jag or something…

This is my first time flying standby by myself…usually i have Phong to guide me and run with the ball. I’m not ungrateful for the discount from Leish…far from it…i just don’t think i’m cut out for the standby game. It’s why i’m not cut out for the contracting game. Sure the financial benefits of both are great, but the positives don’t outweigh the negatives for someone who puts very little worth on fiscal buoyancy.

Phong had a good theory today as to why i am perennially late for flights. When other people are involved, i’m like an hour early and everything organised…to compensate. When i’m left up to my own devices i just don’t care enough what happens to divert the resources towards the goal…if it doesn’t work for me it doesn’t work and was probably not meant to be. It’s fatalism with a splash of indifference.

So speaking as someone who is perennially late to flights i don’t think i’ve ever been more pissed off at late-comers than watching the smarmy bastards walking through security to the gate tonight with 20 minutes to go before take-off. It’s a fucking International flight! One of the longest flights you can possibly take. Where were the Heathrow Terminal 5 tyrant fuckers when you need them? Fucks sake i went and bought another ticket and still made it through check in and they wouldn’t let me in and these fuckers just waltz through like its the Wigan defence on one of the days that they don’t pull a victory out of their arse.

By the way..the plan is to stay awake for the entire Frankfurt Singapore Leg…in the hope that i can sleep the second leg and wake up on Australian time. Stay tuned for more sleep deprived hilarity. I’ve been up for 21 hours as it stands….

Of course this could all go tit’s up if i don’t get the next flight. Then i have to wait up till the following morning or shell out for a hotel in Singland. Exactly how respectable do i have to look to get on these Standby flights? Stay tuned…

So i just completed a master-course in cinematic endurance. My word i’ve seen some bad movies but having just persevered through Russell Crowe’s Robin Hood i feel am capable of withstanding anything. Surely this is one of the levels of hell. Seriously, this is the most fetid, pompous tripe i have ever seen on the screen. Russ must have been sitting there with his other Kiwi buddies watching a Marathon of 300, Gladiator – probably more than once – and Braveheart and thought…why can’t i make a movie like this? But you can Russ! I don’t know though…seems like a lot of work. Remember Gladiator? That took fucking forever. Alright, let’s save some time then and just redo a movie that’s already been done….several times….and use the cinematic experience from all these other movies that have also been done…many times over. Ok i’m warming to the project…do we have to do anything to it? I don’t know…maybe we just change it up a bit…make a few changes here and there. OK like what? Well….what parts do people like of 300? Well the fights scene’s Russ. Well let’s just have a lot of fight scenes. Fuck it, make Maid Marion fight. And that fat cunt Tuck. He can fight too. I like it Russ…but what makes that different from Kevin Costner’s one? Besides the lack of a Brian Adam’s soundtrack? Not a whole lot…hmmm. Ok what about….bare with me….what about…we make him hardly ever use a bow and arrow throughout the movie. Seriously…we can have him kill people with swords and spears and axes and shit like that.

Then it’s Gladiator you dickhead.

I think the only way this movie experience could have been worse is had i been watching it on a Ryanair flight into or out of Germany so that clap-happy audience could clap all the way through every time Russ delivers a load of wank speech in the stylee of Mel…what is it with all the Australian wannabe’s trying to make epic films? The only surprise was that he didn’t try to write the score for the film or include a few tracks from 30 Odd foot of grunt on the soundtrack…

Me to old biddy #1 to my left: That baby has not made a sound all flight…it’s incredible
Old biddy #1: Apparently it’s done like 30 flights or so.
Amazed me: Fuck off!
Old biddy #2: She’s 13 months old…*Turns to father/Son in law* How many flights has she done?
Father of the year: This is her 52nd flight… She’s clocked over 140,000 air miles
Aussie lad in row behind: Fuck, that’s child abuse…

Father of the year didn’t get it….

So i finally land after 23 hours in the air. Do the rounds to the parents houses and a bit of shopping as i only bought one pair of pants and managed to get chocolate on them during the flight. We have Father’s day lunch at some schmick restaurant on the water before heading back to my sister’s gaff. The 18th wind has kicked in now as we head to the pub to watch the mighty dragons slay the rabbitohs. Minor premier’s this year…still even diehard fans are trying to work out if it will be the first or second round when the inevitable choke occurs.

Roughly 50 hours awake in total…

Comically, I don’t date anywhere near enough girls where i can pass these sorts of comments off without the girl(s) in question getting suspicious. There’s probably a couple of girls i know that if they read this would assume i am talking about them. Don’t worry it’s not you that i’m writing about…or is it? Nah, Just kidding…or am i? I can feel a Carly Simon remix coming on…

It’s Tuesday night and not a single Patrick Swayze joke has come my way. By this stage i already had about 3 different email chains going trading Michael Jackson jokes…Does no-one care anymore????

This guy is my new idol. Well i didn’t really have an idol before that. Maybe Kurt Cobain, and this guy doesn’t beat him. Ok this is someone i look up to. I’d like to think i can bitch about stuff with certain aplomb but credit where credit’s due this guy takes it to a whole new level. I would almost consider joining Twitter to follow this guy. I said almost. I’ve almost considered giving up drinking at times, doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. http://twitter.com/shitmydadsays

Squires won’t link to me because i use certain words too much which may offend the ‘high-brow’ readers of his site. I will have you folks know – and by you i mean Squires and Berger, my faithful audience – i have shown considerable constraint when dropping the c-bomb recently.

So because of this my self-constraint, i feel no ashame when i ask – What is your definition of a cunt?

Someone who uses the middle urinal out of a possible three, making you take one of the side ones next to him?

Someone who purposely writes a post about cunts so that he can tag it again making the word appear even bigger in the tag cloud, rivalling ze Germans?

Someone who treads on an ex-teammates head the first time they meet?

Discuss.

The only, and I mean ONLY reason there should have been a concert for Michael Jackson passing, is if – and this is not a great leap of faith – he was truly destitute when he passed and left his kid(s) with a crap load of debt, and the ENTIRE proceeds of the aforementioned concert went to his dependents. Case closed. If that wasn’t the case here, then I am sickened by each one of those people who took to that stage. You want to show your appreciation? Sing him a song in your fucking room. I am ok with a public memorial service or something if you need to be seen showing your grief, but how can you possibly justify getting on stage and all singing ‘We are the world’ or some bollocks? What, you are musicians as well, so you can only express your true selves musically? Fucking write him a song. You want to celebrate his music? Put out a tribute album, and still put all the proceeds towards a trust fund for his kids or a charity or something. You were merely using this as a launching platform to reignite your careers in a circus of glorified name-dropping. Yeah i was a friend of Michaels. You weren’t publicising this when he was touching kids were you.

As i am writing this, more footage is coming up on the screen of the circus, and there is a little girl crying into the microphone…presumably his kid. Is that really necessary? Really really? Now that she doesn’t have to wear a veil around and live at Disneyland may mean she has a chance at a normal – and i use this in the sense of ‘non-celebrity’ – lifestyle, you go and put her in front of the world crying. We know she’s hurt, her Dad just died. Who’s fucking idea was this? I doubt she woke up and said…can someone put some concert thing on so i can go in front of the world and cry…i think Dad would have liked that.

And now it’s back to the non-stop interviews of people with their thoughts on this. If everyone who was putting their 2 cents in actually gave 2 cents, we wouldn’t have had to had the circus/concert. I’m just as bad. I tried for a long time not to put my 2 cents in but the concert thing just got to me.

To be honest, i didn’t really care. I don’t mean it in a hurtful way, but his passing just didn’t strike me. People die all the time. Just because he’s famous doesn’t mean anything extra special. I admit yes he has touched my life in some way and probably influenced it somehow. One of the first tape cassettes i had was Michael Jackson off the Wall. The first CD i had was Michael Jackson Dangerous. I later sold it to Soundgarden record store in Hurstville to pay for me to get drunk at schoolies (Spring Break for Australians). I had Moonwalker on VHS and loved that movie man. He was always there in my childhood. Did i know him personally? No. So why the fuck would i expect it to change my life in anyway that he is gone? Does it mean i like him any more / less now, because i didn’t feel anything? No, it doesn’t change anything. The guy hadn’t created music in years and even when he did it’s been ten years or more since there was something good. He was getting old, it’s time to move on and live out the rest of his weird life out of the spotlight.

Of course it would be remiss of me to say i feel this way about all musicians/celebrities. I don’t. It was weird as hell when Kurt Cobain passed, and Layne Staley passed, Andy Wood or that guy from Blind Melon. Michael Hutchence, was a bit different cause of the controversy – kind of took the edge of it. Admittedly these were all people’s whose music and talents i admired, but i think the key point is that they were taken at their prime when they were still creating and still enhancing our lives. None of them were set to embark on a greatest hits tour in the near future. Much like Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Bon Scott, Janis Joplin, John Lennon, Buddy Holly and everyone else that passed before my time…You feel let down or cheated almost because you know what they were capable of, and you wanted to see them bloom. Their death means no more than Michael Jackson’s, don’t get me wrong – just because they were still creating and he wasn’t… but the associated feeling of depravity is there with their passing when it is not with Michael Jacksons. Thriller was a great album…doesn’t mean he’s immortal people. He was going to pass at some stage, you’ve had a fair amount of time to prepare for this.

If people will argue that he was the king of pop and our generation’s Elvis, i think it is weak. James Brown died a few years back and there wasn’t this much of a song and dance, no pun intended. He was the Godfather of Soul! He had just as much, if not more of an influence on music than Michael Jackson, in my opinion. And his death was handled respectfully. The right amount of tributes, memorial services etc.

Johnny Cash passed, and i was just getting to adore his music. But similarly, albums full of covers – as great as they were – is just a symbolic greatest hits tour. I was saddened by his death shortly after June’s because the whole idea was sad. He’d spent his whole life going after her, and when she left, he left too. But did i mourn or change my ways in any? No. I probably listened to his music more which is probably what any recording artist would like.

I wonder if it is the timing that caused this public outpour. Is it because of the sudden nature of it – as Squires would say i didn’t even know he was sick? Combine that with the upcoming world tour – i mean i don’t remember hearing about him for years before that, since the kiddy-fiddling cases. Maybe that is the sense of depravity and cheated feeling i was talking about before. Your chance to see him shine / or conversely fail (depending on which team you bat for) has been taken away. My ambivalence towards his passing is probably due to me not being in either camp. I really just didn’t care.

This explains my lack of empathy, but does not mean his passing should not affect you. If you’re sad, be sad. You just don’t need television cameras in front of you why you do it. Drugs or Religions are fine if that’s what you are into, just don’t force other people to do it with you.

In conclusion, i barely watch tv and would like something non-Michael Jackson related on it when i do…so the rest of the world should cater to my needs :-)