You saw it here first!

It was Charlie's 3rd birthday last Friday. His Nanna and Grandad gave him his first proper musical instrument: a guitar! (Or, to us fully-grown people: a ukulele.)

The following video was taken less than a minute after he first tore the wrapping off. What you are seeing here is Charlie's first ever composition and musical performance.

Take it away!

Thought for the day

Never underestimate the genius of stupidity.

About as Adelaide as it gets

Penny Wong gave us her table at Lucia's, but we needed one more seat so Jay Weatherill gave us his spare.

Droppin' mad beatings. I think.

It must be recorded here.

I finally fulfilled my lifelong dream. Indeed, it is probably the lifelong dream of many a tragic music fan (it being, in this case, the music which is tragic, not the fan)(okay, also the fan): I was a DJ.

Here is me DJing:

Scratchin' on da mouse pad of steel.Y'all.

No, that is not just me leaping into the frame of a casually set up laptop. 

This is MY laptop!

That is my playlist!

I snaffled a gig DJing at The Fringe Club and was allowed to play anything I wanted! I was king of the world! There are few things I like more than my music, played loud. There are fewer people who appreciate my music, played loud, but the drag queen MC and the sound tech guy reported that they approved of my track selections.

What did I play? 

Well, I stuck to my guns and tried to do that difficult thing of playing stuff that people haven't really heard, but would definitely like. That didn't last long.

I gave in and played 'Groove is in the heart'.

Which I then followed up with 'Bust a Move'.

For some reason, I'm both ashamed and proud. Ashamed that I stooped so low, and proud that I had the audacity to actually reach that low. 

"Yeah, but I'm playing them ironically," I said, to anyone who asked why I was cranking out wedding floor fillers. No one actually asked. The professional DJ who came on at 11pm gave me a thumbs up and told me the Perth music festival he had just DJed at was cool. I didn't tell him that I'd just come from watching Looney Tunes cartoons with Charlie and that that was also cool.

There were so many highlights, one was playing the following song just as a nice young couple of dudes hit the floor together:

They didn't stay long.

No matter, it was totally exciting and I got paid in beer and pizza and I'm doing it again next week!

Whitney looked so happy ... and rakishly handsome

It seems like the good people at People went with her seldom-seen "front view". It's such a shame they buggered up the headline though, since it's so obvious from these photos that LL Cool J is the closest thing we have to Whitney Houston.

In other news, LL Cool J can rock him some perl earrings! Go dude! Go!

Ah, summer

 

Did I mention that I've got a new camera and that I'm in love with it? The thing just does not take a bad photo. Have a little trip to Looki's site and the kind of nice things this camera can do.

"Have you ever been mistaken for a man?" "No. Have you?"

There's this terrifying bit in Roald Dahl's Going Solo where he describes working in the desert and being taught to shake his boots for scorpions before putting them on.

I read this at age ten and it has always stayed with me. So much so that for years I have been shaking out my shoes, just in case there were any multipedes in there, ready to destroy my life. I've never shaken out anything more terrifying than a grass seed.

Until yesterday.

I performed my usual shoe-shake ritual: pick up the shoe, shake, bang on ground, visual inspection, shake, bang on ground again (to dislodge anything with grappling hooks), quick poke with hand (why this less dangerous than with a foot is not clear to me), second visual, shake, bang on  ground a third time, then put shoe on. (Repeat with second shoe. Mow lawn. But we're not up to that yet.)

I noticed on the sometimes-used third visual inspection, a particularly stubborn grass seed drop back into the toe of the shoe. A quick hand poke dislodged nothing. On the fourth visual inspection, I saw it, nestled up under the tongue.

A true-blue redback spider.

Yes, after all the hand-poking and shaking and banging and visualising. That thing was probably chasing my big, soft, pink hand out of its huge comfy nest after each poke. It was probably planning an Aliens-style den of terror and venom. I half expected to see Hudson tumbling out of my old sneaker tossing grenades over Ripley's head and squealing 'Game over, man! Game over!'

I squished that fucker dead. Then I nuked it from orbit. It was the only way to be sure.

Then I went around the entire house and lacquered every single spider-sized hidey hole with very toxic bug spray. I would prefer my family died of poisoning than redback spider attack.

Now my feet smell permanently of insect repellent and my years-long shoe ritual just got longer.

Thanks, Roald Dahl. You saved my feet (and possibly my life - it was a pretty big spider).