Chuck's Corner

Ginger Reyes just testing out her new bass guitar at my place. Oh yeah, she is also in the Smashing Pumpkins Smashing Pumpkins good. Hangover bad. Billy Corgan tall. People asking me important questions right now at work bad. "Bring The Light" good. Festival Hall bad. Got there late. Only missed two songs. Got very drunk. Met hot girls. Danced to Zeitgeist. Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage. Keep hitting back space==///// almost. Pumpkins played wierd song that went for ten minutes. Surprised girls and friends when I told them the song was "Set The Controls For The Heart of the Sun" by Pink Floyd. Say what? Yes motherfucker, it was off their second album Saucer Full Of Secrets. No "Cherub Rock" but Billy wore a silver skirt -- weirdo.

They're French but I won't hold that against themThe last band I saw were Ween and the gig put me off live shows for a few weeks. Basically, I wanted to elbow most of the crowd in the face Fight Club style. They had to be the biggest bunch of angry, stoned, drunk, rude, stinking, drooling yobbos that I had the misfortune of ever being in the room with. Get over yourselves. Adding to that, I thought Ween performed poorly and the mixing was sub-par. Thank Jesus the good Lord Christ that I had earplugs to filter out most of the shitty top end ear-ruining noise.

I missed out on seeing Queens of the Stone Age on Tuesday night due to unforeseen circumstances. So I guess you could say I was happy when I got to the Palais to see Air last night and found that the crowd were not rude, smelly or angry. The girls were hot and the beer was at a reasonable price. It was civilised. It was also Air’s first time in Australia.

Don't make him angryThere are big people and then there's Lou Ferrigno. Lou was in Melbourne appearing at the Supanova pop culture expo.

I asked Lou if he really turned green when he gets angry. He smiled and said that he never gets angry. However, he used to get frustrated growing up because he was trying to deal with losing most of his hearing from the age of 3 due to an ear infection. He couldn't understand what people were saying on TV so he turned to comics books and dreamed of one day being the Hulk. He became extremely introverted and was severely bullied at school because he had to wear a large hearing aid. Also, Lou couldn't make the football team because he was too skinny.

You get the feeling when talking to Lou that underneath this massive frame is a sensitive and vulnerable guy with a burning passion to overcome any obstacle that is thrown his way.

The lacerations will healLast weekend was up there with my usual standard of disasters. The only reason I can remember Saturday night is because I fell through a barbed wire fence and summersaulted onto the back of my head and knocked myself out for a few hours. Why the fuck I was trying to scale a ten foot barbed wire fence only my drunken half knows but hey, it was probably totally reasonable at the time.

It all started on Friday evening when I finished my high-paying powerful-job and was walking down Little Collins st looking at other people seeming like they were having a good time with after work beverages. I felt a bit left out and I didn't want to go home and play Dungeons and Dragons just yet so I walked up to Cookie, ordered a beer and stood in the corner looking busy in case Jesus was watching.

The table is from Wayne and Arthur aka the Dodgy Bros

Stocktake of moment in time:

1. M-Audio USB Keyboard

2. AKG Microphone and stand

3. Photo of myself jumping off huge waterfall in NT

3. Statue of Aphrodite

Enough to make anyone pack up and move to Darwin

Did somebody say Strawberry Kisses? Because Nikki Webster has now officially changed her name to Nikki Keane. She was going call herself Kerry-Anne Kennerley but the JB discount album bin is already overloaded and it's not even Christmas.

No word if the pronunciation is Ke-anne or Keen but it may as well be mustard because there is no way you can escape your past when you have red hair and had a "starring role in the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony" as "Hero Girl." (from her updated Wiki page)

Her Wiki page also notes, with great prestige, that she completed Unit 2 English and General Mathematics. Whoop-de-fucken-do! Here is an idea. If you are trying to grow the fuck up, lose the VCE subjects on your Wiki page.

Take that Bergman

So the "immortal" Ingmar Bergman has kicked the bucket and just like the retirement of all round "nice bloke" Steve Bracks, the eulogies have been pouring in for the Swedish master of gloom and melancholia.

"Bergman's work left no doubt that film and its expressions are at least as strong as any of the old arts: music or painting,"

"He was a director of the human condition, of the misery of man, of feminine mystery,"

"monumental figure of this century's cinema" (probably means last century)

And from the editor of of Sight & Sound, the magazine of the British Film Institute Nick James,

"There are very few people of that kind of stature today. He proved that cinema could be an art form,"

Well I've got news for you Mr know-it-all editor of another industry who like advertising, loves to give itself rewards, awards and accolades. Ingmar was not the only genius of art and film who died today/in the last few days, another person slipped into the ether unnoticed and without the bells and whistles the Ingmar has attracted.

Not the new Smashing Pumpkins album coverOccasionally just occasionally a movie lives up to its preview. This preview/teaser has got pundits, youtubers, fruitcakes and forums buzzing with all sorts of entertaining theories as to what it is about. The movie has no name as yet and is going by the tag Cloverfield or 1.18.08.

Is it some kind of monster? Aliens? Pissed off soldiers of fortune who have been secretly living underground for years and now are starting the revolution? Or another Dickless Cheney scare campaign? I'm betting it's ex-Howard rottweiler Amanda Vandstone paying a visit fellow ambassador and ex-Howard archrival Andrew Peacock.

A step up from Milsy

There is a quote from Chopper Read that goes like this:

"When the willies started to hit the floor, that's when I gave up being president of the Van Gough Club."

Chopper was referring to a time when a prisoner named Gary (David) Webb sliced off his own knob in jail to get some attention from the nurses. Chopper had previously and infamously sliced off his ears to get out of H Division.

Now, I am not quite sure of the date when Alternative Music ceased from being alternative and independent but when Damien Leith, Australian Idol winner and hunter of lepricorns has the best selling Alternative EP on iTunes called 22 Steps (Sony BMG), I think it's time for a few willies to hit the floor -- because by the sound of his voice his balls already have.

Incidentally, the top selling Alternative singles on iTunes are:

1. I Don't Want to be in Love (Good Charlotte)

2. Straight Line (Silverchair)

3. Little Wonders (Rob (John) Thomas)

4. 22 Steps (Damien Leith)

5. Keep Your Hands Off My Girl (Good Charlotte)

6. Get Fucked Everyone (Me)