I was going to go to a stencilling workshop yesterday, but ended up going to a hip hop workshops. I did some freestyle MCing. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before, but it wasn’t scary, it was just heaps of fun. Most people in the group were non-hip-hoppers, so there was plenty of bad rhyming, but everyone got into it with such enthusiasm that even the bad rhyming got applause.

Then I went to one final panel that seemed like it might be fun because it had “Buffy” in its title, but just ended up being a bunch of people talking about identity politics.

I had a quiet night and ended up watching the live decision show of “Australian Idol”. It seemed so extravagant seeing it both live and the whole one hour show, not the 30 minute cut down version TVNZ shows. It was brilliantly paced with the last two people left on the couch. One of them had done a stunning performance the night before, the other had been lacklustre. The stunning performance ended up getting through to the final three, and then was one of the two to be eliminated. The whole show seemed to have a feeling of real sadness.

Oh, but gladness soon followed. The next show on channel 10 was “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” where a team of five gay guys help a straight guy get his act together. Clothes, decor, food and wine, and the vital art of manscaping (keeping body hair trimmed). It’s such an entertaining and also informative show. I demand that it be shown in New Zealand.

Would “Lesbian Eye for the Straight Chick” work? Probably not.

Ok, I’m off to Sydney soon.

Ok, more news from Newie.

The first panel I went to yesterday was on television writing. The speakers were the president of the Australian Writer’s Guild, a guy who is a writer on “The Secret Life of Us” and this crazy lady who came in late (she’d missed the train) and took over the room with her stories of how writing for television all but ruined her life.

Here are some things I learned from the panel:

• When generating drama, it’s not what makes characters like each other (that’s easy), but what makes characters hate each other.
• The Australian television production industry is a false industry held up by quotas.
• Drama series that work have some sort of element of life jeopardy – death, jail, illness, etc. This translates to shows about police, lawyers, doctors, etc.
• British comedy originates from panto-style theory (crikey, vicar!), American comedy originates from radio comedy (lots of talking). Trying to use either of these formats in a country that doesn’t have a tradition of having them (i.e. Australia, or New Zealand) isn’t going to work. What is the great Australian comedy type? Possibly yarning, story telling. How does this translate into television comedy? Um… we’re working on it. If you want to write for television, you must watch television. Watch all the popular shows and figure out why they are so popular. Yes, what is the appeal of watching middle class people freaking out when they discover their lounge has been painted orange?
• If you dedicate your life to TV writing, make sure that you still go out so you don’t go crazy.
• Whether you are male or female, have a wife. She will make things much easier for you.
• Never underestimate the power of having a well known actor attached to your project.

Then I went to the zine fair. I acquired a huge pile o’ zines and a few comics. I was walking past one stand and was excited to see a copy of Annettle’s Mango zine. A guy with a mohawk was reading it. It’s going to be really cool coming back to Auckland just in time for Small Print. Every time I go to This Is Not Art, I always get a little sad (boohoo!) that there’s nothing like it in New Zealand, so it’s really exciting that Small Print is happening. A small step in the right direction.

Ok, after the zine fair I went to a panel on sex and censorship. It turns out that fetish porn is illegal in Australia. Like, a woman in a porno can say “Whip me, baby!”, but can’t actually be shown being whipped, because that’s considered sexual violence. One of the panellists is doing a three year study gauging Australia’s porn habits. Because no one really wants to proclaim “I wank and I vote!”, the strongest voices during porn debates is usually anti-porn campaigners, so the survey is aiming to get an idea of the kind of porn that the average porn-consuming Australian likes. Also, another panellist who works in a sex shop revealed the sexual fetishes of a couple of Australian politicians. I can’t remember their names, so I have no gossip to share.

Oh, and I was interviewed by a guy who is making a radio documentary for Triple J about artists on the dole. I ended up having a long talk with him (off the mic) about Australia and New Zealand. At one point I was talking about kohanga reo and I felt all patriotic. It was a weird moment.

Then finally I ended up seeing some really good spoken word and hip-hop. I’d write more about it, but, oh, I have to go off to a workshop about stencilling. (Shut up, Robyn).

It’s raining today.

Righto, yesterday I went on the Magical Mystery Writing Tour. It was a short journey on the ferry across the harbour to the suburb of Stockton. The idea was that everyone would write stuff on the ferry and read it out on the other side, but the ferry ride was so short that really only haikus could be written well. I furiously concocted the following verse:

Ahoy
Welcome to the ferry.
The neglected mode of public transport.
Punkster, zinester, scenesters forget to include ferry rides to the other side.
How hip is it to be stuck behind a lady with a poodle perm?
Or to be near that fat man with the baseball cap?
Now I’ve experienced the ferry and I can only hope that on the return journey we will be invaded by pirates.
Harrrr!

Then I toodled off to the sex panel. There’s always a panel on sex. One of the speakers on this year’s panel wore a giant red dildo around her neck. She had it perched above her boobs, and when she laughed the dildo wobbled. At one stage she said, “I think I’m a bit of an exhibitionist.” The point was made that there are more terms for sexual things that men can have done to them than women have. A man can say “teabag me” while a woman often just has to literally describe what she wants done. Also, now instead of saying wet or wetness, we call it sass.

Oh, there was an MC battle last night. MC battles are really just very cool theatresports. It’s not all that far removed from the dorky songs they make up on “Whose line is it anyway?” So a bunch of MC battled it out. There were no entry restrictions, so people such as a bearded hippy going by the name of MC Donalds was up against a really good MC. There were two girls in the battle. Nurse Pussy (who was ok, but not great) and Karly (who was pretty good). Karly had the advantage of being a hot chick, so many of the guys she was up against were paralysed by her hotness and didn’t perform as well as they had.

Then I went to Harry’s Cafe de Wheels and got a vege pie with mashed potato, mushy peas and gravy. It’s worth going to Newcastle (or Sydney) for the Harry’s pie experience.

Travel =

- The plane was delayed about an hour because it was late getting to Auckland airport and an alarm went off meaning a delay in airport processing.
- I had to wait around for about an hour at the central train station in Sydney for the hourly Newcastle train.
- About three quarters into the train trip everyone had to get off and continue the journey by bus because of track maintenance.
- I finally arrived in Newcastle at 11.30 pm and the hotel lobby was filled with drunk uni students.
- Newcastle rules.

I was on a panel yesterday about artists and the dole. Centrelink, the Australian dole office, is pretty strict and there are all these work-for-the-dole schemes. There were horror stories of smart, talented people being forced to make dorky comics. There were also funny stories of all the creative things that people come up with to get out of doing stuff. Then I made everyone envious when I described Work and Income’s PACE programme. I’m glad that the New Zealand government takes the arts seriously.

There was an excellent panel yesterday called “Why are writers such bastards?” Everyone drank alcoholic ginger beer and yelled “BASTARD!” a lot. One of the guys on the panel revealed that he literally was a bastard as his mother had never married his father. The question in the topic was never answered, but there were many stories of bastardly writers, getting back at former lovers by writing bitter, award-winning poems about them. And y’know, it’s true: writers just write because they can’t do anything that requires real talent.

Last year the bar across the road from my hotel was a nudie bar. This year it had been transformed into a classy establishment. There was some spoken word stuff being performed there. It was of mixed quality. One chick read out pseudo sexy stuff in a pseudo sexy voice and said fuck and cunt a bit. I discovered that almost anything will sound cool if there’s a double bass being played along with it. Then ESL performed two songs “A Shadow In The City Cast” and “If if if”. I love ESL. I bought their CD in Newcastle last year. Frontman Eytan Messiah does this kind of hip-hop infused performance poetry over cool beats. I’m not sure how else to describe ESL, other than they are great.

Oh, here’s a tangent. My friend was telling me about a conversation he’d had with a New Zealand MC who’d just come back from Melbourne. This guy was saying how he was amazed at how all the hip-hop events he went to in Australia were full of white guys, and where were all the brown faces. Well, it’s because Auckland is the city with the largest Polynesian population in the world, not Melbourne. So while New Zealand has a strong hip-hop scene filled with many people of Polynesian origin, Australia has lots of white guys on the mic. So yeah, imagine a hip-hop scene where everyone looks like P-Money, lots of skinny white guys. And there’s a lot of guys like there here, and they kick arse.

Ok, then finally last night I went to a roundtable discussion called “Word is Nerd” about nerd culture. “I don’t want to be a nerd,” I wailed. “I want to be cool!”. But as nerdy as I can be at times, at least I’m not a Buffy fan.

This mornin’ I did some spoken word at a cafe. I was impressed that people actually dragged their arses out of bed and got along to the cafe for the eleven o’clock performance. I managed to concoct a few amusing pieces of writing that went down well. Good spoken word performance is so much better than stand-up comedy or poetry. No need for any “ladiesandgentlemen” vocal tics (a la Mike King) or angry young wo/man poems about George Bush being the antichrist. All you need to do is get up in front of the mic and share your tales with the audience. Well, I find it easy.

I walked up the Big Donger today. It offers lovely views of the Newcastle city, harbour and coast. And it smells like stale wees.

And that brings me up to date. I’m in a dark (blinds down, lights off) internet cafe, but it’s clean and doesn’t smell, so I’m happy.