Wrestlemania Eve, Paranoia and Music Galore!

Twas the night before Wrestlemania, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring.. wait.. I'm sitting here writing, that has to count as stirring right?

Hey folks, it's certainly been a little while since I've written a proper blog post. So here's a quick catch up on what's been happening in the last few months.

I made some new friends, one in particular that I get along with so well, I played some gigs, The Savages even got to play a "full band show" with our old drummer who flew in from Perth especially for something else, and just happened to have the time to play a show, I have kept my diet up and am down a little over 8 kilos now (I've still got a long way to go, but it's a pretty decent start I think) And I've cut way back on my facebook usage.

That last one leads me into the subject of this here blog entry.

Once again, that whole confidence thing that I talked about a few months ago is something that I'm still having problems with. So much so that I'm worried that I may have screwed up a budding friendship with a really great person.

I should tell a bit of back story here right? Well, without naming any names or getting too specific, I made a new friend in the last couple of months, and we get along amazingly well. We bonded over some similar circumstances and just clicked. You know what I mean.. you meet someone and you just click instantly? That. That's what happened.

 The problem is, this new friend of mine is a much busier person than me, and frequently goes on trips to melbourne, along with working, and doing all the things most people do. So sometimes it can be hard to get in contact with them. Which, I totally understand and I'm not complaining about it at all. People lead busy lives. I tend not to, but that doesn't give me the right to be like "hey.. why didn't you message me back straight away?"

So, here's my problem. My new friend, let's call her Alice because I'm sick of using pronouns, and plus, Milla Jovovich plays Alice in Resident Evil and she kicks ass. Anyway, Alice has had some hard times lately from what I can gather, but I think because our friendship is still new, she hasn't felt comfortable really talking to me about it, which again, I totally understand. I had some rough times last year, and there was only one friend I felt comfortable talking to candidly about it all, and really, there's still not many people I'll totally open up to when it comes to hard times.

But of course, that didn't stop me from acting like a moron.

Now, when I say moron, I don't mean I said something really dumb, or went totally crazy, and honestly, this could all just be in my head, and I could just be somehow picking the worst time to text Alice lately. Bad timing seems to be the theme with me lately. I met a girl one week too late and she met someone else in between our two dates, a girl told me she thinks I'm great but she'd just gotten out of a relationship with a guy called David, who even LOOKED like me... I even started talking to a girl who was leaving like 2 days later to go on holiday for a month. Just bad timing.

On the plus side, I have a hell of a lot of new songs written.

But back to the story. Really all that's happened is that I haven't heard from Alice in about two weeks. The problem is, I've sent her half a dozen messages in that time, and haven't got a response. Now like I said, my logical brain tells me that's most likely because A: she's not comfortable talking to me at the moment because of what's going on in her life (which, as I said, I completely relate to), and B: I'm picking bad times to text.

But the problem is, and this is the real thing for me, I would text her, get no response, and start this cycle of thinking that goes something like "Oh, she probably hasn't read it/wait, she must have read it, I just saw her online on facebook/she mustn't want to reply to me/oh I'll just say hi on facebook now/ok now I know she saw that message, facebook tells me so/why didn't she reply?/oh man I've screwed this up, I should text her and say sorry/wait no I can't do that, it's too soon/but if I don't talk to her she'll forget about me and we won't be friends/I have to keep in touch otherwise the friendship won't last.

And there is the problem. Last year I felt like I'd lost a really good friend who I have known for about 15 years, because I decided to stop putting all the effort into my friendship with her, and we lost touch. I think that's part of it at least. I feel like, especially with new friendships, I need to keep in regular contact or I'll lose the friend.

But, it's more than that, because I'm not like that with every person I meet. Something's different with Alice. It may be that because I really feel that great connection that I really want us to be friends, and I don't want to lose what we were building. It may be that I feel like I don't have many close friends these days, and want to hold on to those friendships that feel close and good.

I really can't put my finger on what it is, but I know that it definitely has to do with my complete lack of self confidence. I feel like I'm not good enough for Alice, that I have to prove myself worthy to be her friend, and I find myself thinking "why would she want to be friends with me?". And yes, I know that way of thinking is not great, but I can't seem to get away from it. I'm sure she doesn't think like that, and I don't really know why I do.

Well, I mean that's not totally true, I do know where it stems from. But I feel like I should be past all that stuff by now. It's almost been three full years since then.

And a totally separate part of me thinks that I'm just being an idiot and paranoid and that I shouldn't worry about it, and I should do what feels right.

I just don't know which side of me is winning right now.

What I do know is that I really hope I haven't made Alice feel like she doesn't want to be my friend any more. She's a pretty great person, and it makes me sad to know she's having a hard time at the moment. We may have only met a couple of months ago, but my life is better for her being in it, and if that changes, it will most definitely suck.

So that's it, I just needed a place to get all this stuff off of my chest without it being too specific or anything.

Wait, some positive news to end this. That's a good idea right?

I have my first solo gig for 9 months coming up this Thursday night! I'm really excited about it, as well as a bit nervous, but I feel like it's going to go well. As I said earlier, I've been writing a lot of new stuff, so it'll be fun to show off some new material. Let's just hope I have a somewhat decent crowd there to listen to me.

                                                 Here's the promo video I made for the show:
                                        

Also today I bought, for the first time in a long time, some new music DVDS. I'd gone into JB Hifi to pre-order a new xbox game, but walked out with 4 new DVDS. Nirvana Live at Reading, Iron Maiden: Maiden England 88, Johnny Cash live in Denmark, and End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones (which is an amazing documentary).

Oh and I forgot to pre-order the game. Smart stuff huh?

Also I've recently purchased a new video camera and Tablet, so from now on, I'll be able to play Angry Birds on a bigger screen and then make a full  HD video blog about it.

Good times!

That's it folks, thanks for reading, sorry it was mostly a downer.

There's really only one thing left to say.
WRESTLEMANIA TOMORROW BABY! 21-0

And I'm done.

The first three days,

Hi folks,

So I thought I'd give you all a bit of an update to let you know how the first few days of this "meat-tox" that I'm trying is working out. I've already lost some weight, which is good news, and I'm feeling good in general about what I'm eating. I bought some 70% cocoa dark chocolate, which is what was recommended to me to eat if I wanted chocolate way back in 2006, and I haven't touched any of the regular chocolate in my fridge since Monday.

I've made a video each day for the first three days, and here they are!

Day One

Day Two

Day Three

If you haven't checked them out, please do. I don't think they'll be daily videos for the entire month, because, quite frankly, I don't think that would be very interesting. But I am going to do at least weekly videos.

I really want some feedback (unless you're vegetarian, and you're just going to tell me meat is murder), so please watch them, and leave me a comment on here, or on the videos themselves.

Thanks!

It's time, it's time for a punk rock party

Hello folks,

I feel like this year is getting off to a much better start than last year. Without going into too much detail (and so I don't jinx myself) let's just say that I had a lot of stuff to deal with in a short amount of time last year, and it took a while to wrap my head around it all.

But this year, I have a band, I have a new(er) car, and I have the drive and determination to make things happen.

I also have the option to start a Bachelor of Arts course mid year this year.

I'm not sure if I'm going to accept the place in the course though, as my main focus is my band, The Savages.

That's what this blog is going to be about. My band.

The Savages really started about 12 years ago, when my best friend and I met, and had a music class together in high school.
We basically spent that entire year playing music together, and all of the years since.

We didn't actually form any official band until 2005, when we started our hard rock band, Abandoned Dream, which eventually morphed into our heavy metal band, Anihilism, which we stayed with until 2009 when we basically just stopped.

With these first two bands though, there always felt like a bit of a lack of drive, a lack of intent to get anywhere. We'd rehearse only occasionally, even when we had the few shows that we did play. Everything just felt like, well at least to me, that I was just waiting for stuff to happen, without putting much effort in on my end.

So, I took a break from music between 2009, and the first half of 2010. Oh, I should mention through all of this time with the other bands, I'd also been playing solo music. I've never been stuck inside only one genre of music. I feel like that would be far too limiting..I've written Metal songs, pop songs, punk songs, acoustic songs, even jazz and blues, and I have aspirations to try my hand at progressive rock, but I don't know that I have the skill at the moment.

So 2011 rolled around, and Curt and I started talking seriously about starting a band. We'd had a few conversations about it already, even written a couple of songs, but it wasn't until 2011 that we really got excited by the idea of starting a new band. Around that time we also went to see a band called Teenage Bottlerocket. I became immediately enthralled with the style of punk that they play. It's not as hardcore as a lot of punk that I'd been exposed to, and also not as poppy as what I'd traditonally called "pop punk". My definition for this term "pop punk" had been changed forever...and for the better too I might add.

So after that I started listening to more real Pop punk. Bands like Teenage Bottlerocket of course, but also The Lillingtons, The Queers, Screeching Weasel, The Huntingtons, and of course, The Ramones. I started writing what would become some of the first Savages songs, although the band didn't have a name at that point. I think at one point we were talking about calling ourselves "The Snowballs".. You see, we wanted a reference to the movie Clerks, because it is both myself, and Curt's favourite movie. And anyone who's seen Clerks, will know exactly where the Snowball reference would have come from. Incidentally, that's also why we use the number 37 for some of our band stuff, and The Savages is also a Clerks reference. (Bunch of Savages in this town...)

So we'd started writing, and even started rehearsing a little. And then, we saw Batfoot!, this awesome pop punk band from the Central Coast of NSW. In fact, I went to all three of their shows, in three nights. Which, for me, was a really massive effort. But I enjoyed myself so much the first night in Melbourne, that I decided I had to go to the Geelong show, and the final show was in Ballarat, which was easy for me to go to. It was awesome.

The Savages first T-shirt

Seeing Batfoot! gave us the final kick in the pants we needed. We came up with a name, we got a set of songs together, and we played our first gig in June 2012.

Since then, we've played nearly a dozen "plugged" shows with some amazing bands, and played four or five acoustic punk shows. However, the best show we've played was the last "plugged" show we did, where we were lucky enough to play with Batfoot!, which was amazing. We got to hang out with the guys, and just generally have an awesome time. We talked about us going up to NSW to play shows with them as well, which is one of our goals for this year.

Unfortunately we also lost our drummer just after that gig (we had a different drummer for the batfoot! show too because of double booking on our old drummer's part), and since then (the start of december) we haven't been able to find a replacement.

The plus side though, is that even though we have no drummer, we can still play these acoustic shows. I really love that the music that we've written translates to acoustic gigs, as well as a full band setup. I really feel like this band can go somewhere, and that is what motivates me to keep it going.

This past week we also recieved our first batch of "The Savages" T-shirts. There's a picture of them up there ^.

I feel so good about this band. It feels like the right style of music, the right time, and it all just fits together really well. Curt and I are on the same page when it comes to writing music, and when we come together with a song one of us has written, the other always adds something more to it to make it even better. We've got something like 25-30 songs that are fully written, maybe not gig-ready, but fully written. We've set ourselves some goals, and we intend to do our very best to achieve them.

We also plan to at least try to start a podcast, and also a video diary of sorts, the latter of which, we've actually already started.
Here's the link to the first ever Savages video diary. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZXlucZFnYQ

We also have a show coming up at Dogs Bar in St Kilda on the 12th of February. Hopefully just one in a large number of shows we have planned for this year.

To finish up, I'm really happy with how this band has come about, doing so much in such a short amount of time, and with such a clear vision of where we want to go.

I'll keep all you blog readers up to date with how the band progresses, but for now, I'm outta here.

Faking it, and Throwing the Bat at it!

I have a funny, strange, weird and slightly creepy story to share with you all, dear readers.

A little background first.

I'm a single guy as most of you know, and because of my condition, I find it harder to go out to places to meet people. Because of that I use online dating sites. I'm not embarrassed by this. The way life is today, with online being such a huge part of all of our lives, it's no different to meeting someone in any other way, except that you're not physically in the same room when you start talking. Which, I think can actually be a good thing. People sometimes make snap judgements based on someone's physical appearance, so if you take that away, and just have the actual conversation part of getting to know someone, it can be a very good thing.


However, occasionally that can also be a bad thing.

And that leads me to my story. It's a short story, but worth telling nonetheless.

I recently (last night in fact) started talking to a girl, who, from her profile, sounded great. Into the same kind of music as me, liked the same kind of movies, a bit alternative.. and overall just like a nice person. So we started chatting last night and got along really well. Even more similar tastes in music, and movies, and just in general I found her easy to chat to, and really nice and interesting.

There was one little red flag which I didn't notice too much at the time.. but in hindsight, was a bit iffy.

She has a lot of tattoos in her pictures, so naturally I asked how many she had in total. Her response was "well I have my arms done, my upper legs and my whole back".. If you have tattoos.. you know exactly how many you have, unless they are sleeves.. which these aren't.

So after today, I realised that should have been a warning sign.

Today, she put some new pictures up on her profile. Something didn't feel 100% right.. and for me, I trust my instincts totally.. or at least I'm trying to. So, I used google to search one of her images, to see if it appeared anywhere else.

It did.

Apparently this "girl".. has taken pictures from the blog of a hairdresser who lives  in London, and passed them off as her own. Which is really puzzling to me. And it reminds me of a movie/documentary that I saw a couple of years ago called Catfish.

I have in fact, in the last 5 minutes just talked to "her" some more, and I asked her which one of her tattoos is her favourite.. her response.. "my arms". Again.. her arms aren't covered in tattoos.

So it's a strange feeling I have at the moment. Part of me wants to have a go "her" and report her.... part of me wants to just say "I know you aren't the person in those pictures".. and part of me wants to mess with "her".. because "she" has messed with me.

The creepy part is not knowing the reasons behind the fake pictures.. It could be as simple as her not being comfortable showing herself online, but it could also be that .. "she" is a he, or a hacker, or some kind of criminal.

I think what I'm going to do is just block and report the profile. I don't want anything to do with someone who isn't who they say they are.

I also just don't understand (other than for nefarious means) what the point of not putting a photo of yourself is.. I mean, what happens if it's just that they aren't comfortable showing themselves online, but then you meet and they look nothing like their photo? If that happened to me, I'd leave straight away. That would be absolutely it. Lying is one thing I won't put up with.. and trust to me is the biggest and most important thing for a relationship to work.

So that's my little story. I hope you all enjoyed it.

Online dating.. usually good, sometimes creepy.


Also as a little addition, I just wanted to talk about the big moment in the Twenty20 Cricket last night.. For those that didn't see it .. here's what happened:

Marlon Samuels (who plays for the Renegades), while bowling, grabbed one of the Stars players (David Hussey)'s shirt while he was running between wickets, essentially preventing him from taking an extra run.

So, in the 2nd Innings, Shane Warne (the captain of the Stars) was bowling to Marlon Samuels, and at the end of his over, walked up the pitch towards him and said "Come on Marlon.. why don't you grab some more people".. and then this little nugget.. "Fuck you Marl..." and his mic was cut off. Yes, he was wearing a microphone AND they had a close up of him as he said it as well.

So that in itself was amazing. You never see or hear things like that in cricket.

But that wasn't the end of it. The next over, Warne fielded a ball and, as he put it, tried to throw it to the Wicketkeeper, but in fact hit Marlon Samuels in the arm. Now I think that he did it on purpose out of anger and frustration, so I'm not condoning it. But I'm really not condoning Marlon Samuel's reaction either. Oh.. what was his reaction you ask? He threw his bat sort of at Warne, but sort of not. The point is he threw his bat up in the air, and down the pitch, which was really uncalled for.

It certainly added a lot of extra drama to the match. Unfortunately Marlon Samuels got hit in the eye while facing another bowler (purely accidental, the ball came up off the edge of his bat and went in between the peak of his helmet and the grill), and it looks like he's hurt pretty badly. So hopefully he is ok, and can at least play in the ODI's for the West Indies in a few weeks.

So that's what happened. I think it was a situation that got out of control, but the umpires and other players handled it really well, and defused the situation very quickly. It's funny to me that a verbal altercation and an "accidental" ball hitting someone is described as "the worst fight in world cricket"... If you compare that to a typical fight in the NRL or in AFL.. there's almost nothing to even talk about. No-one punched anyone, and Warne's throw that hit Samuels was under-arm and not thrown hard at all. I think it's because we never see that amount of aggression that people have been so shocked by this incident.

Personally I don't think it was ever going to go any further.. Marlon Samuels is a massive tall West Indian, and Shane Warne, while feisty, is a lot shorter and smaller than him. And he's also not stupid enough to fight in the middle of a cricket match. Just to speed in his car while being part of an anti-speeding campaign.

Here's a short video of the first part of the altercation (warning: there is swearing in it.. so don't watch it with a kid around!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2a1Tv9rNHM

That's it for this one folks, hope you liked it... comment, like, chat, let me know.. and I'll be back soon. Possibly on video as well!

Goals for the year and rabbits in hats.

Everyone seems to be doing it, so why not me too right?

At the start of every year, people make new year's resolutions. Well, not me. I just set some goals for myself.

So I thought I'd write a blog talking about that. And maybe what I got up to for new years eve. After all, this is a blog about my life, so why not include life event things right? Who knows what might come out onto this page.. er.. file?.. Post! That's what they're called.

So new years eve.. I'm not much of a party guy these days. I don't like big crowds (with the exception of gigs), I really don't like being around a bunch of really drunk people (again, I can make exceptions at gigs), and I don't like clubs and the music that's played at them. Basically, to me going to a club is essentially me going somewhere full of people I have nothing in common with who I don't want to be around, doing things I don't like doing and listening to crap music. Not my idea of a good time.

So for the third year in a row I think, I went to my best friend's place. He was having a small party, which suits me much better.
Really there's not a lot to tell.. we had some food, told a lot of stories and jokes, ribbed each other, played some trivia, and had a great time.

Oh, actually, one highlight for me was performing a magic trick.

Now I know what this blog is going to be about. Goals, and magic.

I got really interested in learning magic a few months ago, after seeing this video (this is my first attempt at embedding something so if it doesn't work, i'll put the link at the end of the blog)

This is a magician called Shawn Farquhar on a show Penn and Teller did called Fool Us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ2ebs9F1ek

So after seeing that trick (and watching it probably 15 times), I found myself wanting to learn how to do card tricks. I've always liked magic...my mum tells me I used to do bad card tricks when I was a kid, and I vaguely remember getting a magic set at some point too. I love the performance side of it, and the technical skill involved especially interests me. And, if you watch that trick, it is just about flawless. Even a few months later, learning all that I've learned about sleight of hand, I have no idea how he does what he does. (Neither do Penn and Teller though, so I don't feel too bad)

So I decided to buy a couple of decks of cards. A couple quickly became a couple of dozen. It's become something of an addiction to me. I didn't realise at first that there were collectors of playing card decks, but I've quickly become one. I have around 40 decks at this point. The great thing about them is that even though they're not that readily available in Australia, the decks aren't too expensive. Sure, some can get up to $20 and above, but in general they range from about $5 to $15, so I've spent a little bit of money on them, but there are much worse things to spend money on.

My favourites in my collection at this point are the few black decks that I have. They're incredible looking. I also have a deck where the hearts and diamonds are coloured blue instead of red, which I love.

What I've found though, and this may sound like a strange comparison, is that learning sleight of hand and card magic, and cardistry, is a lot like learning how to play the guitar.

I know what you're thinking.. No it's not! Guitars have strings!

You're absolutely right. But, learning card sleights is all about muscle memory, exactly the same way that learning to play the guitar is. For example, I can remember when I first started learning guitar, changing chords was almost impossible to do fluently. In the same way, learning to riffle shuffle cards is all about muscle memory. When I first started trying to shuffle the cards like this (the way magicians do), I was fumbling all over the place and found it almost impossible.. and even thought about giving it up. But, I persevered, and mastered it. I've focused more on learning techniques to start with rather than just jumping into learning tricks, though I have a few simple tricks under my belt, including the one I performed for my friends at new year's... where I turned a red card blue.

This leads me into the other subject I wanted to talk about in this post, being my goals for the year.

1. Get better at card magic, and grow my collection of cards.

This one is pretty simple.. I'd like to be able to do more than one trick convincingly, and get much better at the sleight of hand stuff. And obviously buy more cards.

2. Confidence.

I have this weird lack of self confidence. I want to change that. It's mainly with people I don't know, my friends and family, and people that I'm comfortable with, I have no problem being confident and outgoing. But, as my single friends and readers will know, it's a very different story when it's someone you're meeting as a possible romantic prospect. I need to figure out a way for my confidence I have with my friends to come through when meeting new people.

3. Maintain my exercise and diet and lose more weight.

Another simple one. I want to lose at least another 10 kilos this year, and hopefully more like 20. If I stick fairly closely to my diet and keep walking every day, it's going to happen.

4. Get at least one tattoo.

I tweeted at Kevin Smith telling him I was going to get one of his quotes tattooed on me and he favourited the tweet, so I have to do that at some point. Oh.. and just so you don't think i'm getting a ton of words put on me, the quote is "Why not?" The full quote is in this picture:

5. Find a new drummer for my band.

This one is a "has to happen soon" goal, as we've got some gigs tentatively booked in the coming months. Pretty simple really.

6. Get my band to greater heights

We have some goals in our band, some of which we've already achieved, but we still have a lot left to do. This year we'll release our first cd, have our first merchandise available to buy, and play some shows interstate.

Some other goals I want us to achieve are to get played on the radio (if we can find a radio station that plays punk), get into some magazines or so some kind of interviews, and there are some bands we want to play with, and have hear our music somehow as well.


That's about it really, I mean there are things that are a little out of my control like start a new relationship, or make some money.. but those 6 are my main goals for the year.



Oh, one last thing, I'm thinking as I said in a previous post, of starting a video blog. Let me know if you like this idea, and I'll see what I can come up with.

That's it for this installment. Thanks for reading.

It's been quite a year

Well.. It's the last day of 2012, and I find myself reflecting back on the year I've had, as I'm sure many of you are doing. Or you're already drunk. Either way, fun times!

So, I thought I'd write a post talking about my year, and my goals for next year. Not resolutions as such.. just things I would like to achieve.

A lot happened for me this yeas, as I'm sure it did for you. It started with my ex-step-dad Dave (it's complicated I know) telling me he was planning to move to Queensland, which I took... not so well. He had, for a long time, been the main father figure in my life, and had always been 5 minutes away, if not in the same house, for the past 16 years. So needless to say, it wasn't an easy goodbye. We've stayed in touch.. but not as much as I'd like.

Skipping ahead while I'm on the Dad bit, in the middle of the year I got back in touch with my "real" Dad as it were, Kevin, who lives in New South Wales. I haven't seen him since my wedding back in 2009, and I hadn't talked to him for about a year and a half at the time I decided to get in touch with him again. I'm glad I did, because we've managed to re-kindle a friendship that we hadn't really had for a long time. I think he sees me as an adult now, which is good, and we have some health issues in common (he wears a caliper on one leg and has trouble walking and what not), so we have a common ground we can always talk about. Which is great. I had a lot of fun going to stay with my Dad when I was young, and I'm glad we've got past the issues we had.


So back to the beginning of the year. Only a few weeks after Dave left, my cat Sabbath got sick, and unfortuntately he had to be put down. That was just as hard, if not a little harder than Dave leaving, because.. well Dave is still alive!
As hard as it was, I know it was the right thing to do, rather than have him live in pain. Saying goodbye to him, and being in that room while the vet did what they had to do, was one of the hardest things I've ever done. But he got so many pats, and he was told he was a good boy, and the last thing he heard and saw was me. It's a hard thing when a pet dies. It makes me think of a Kevin Smith quote, when he was talking about losing one of his dogs early this year... "They spend basically their whole lives with you, but you can't spend your whole life with them".

I still miss him, but I have so many fond memories, that I usually am happy thinking about him. He would rear up on his back legs and rub his cheek on my leg, and he would get scared of his own tail and make himself jump... he was awesome.

It affected my other cat Rupert as well, he's become more attached to me, but he's also calmer these days. I think he was stressed out when Sabbath was sick, and it took a while for him to get past it. But he's much better now, and I think quietly loves being the only cat again.

In April, my mum and her husband Joe moved from Melbourne, up here to Ballarat. That was a big thing for me, especially after Dave leaving. My condition makes it such that having someone close by all the time who I can rely on in case I need help, or can't move, or pass out is a big stress reliever. Plus, it's nice to be able to have lunch at mum's once a week. Free food is the best food right?

May, was my birthday. Nothing much happened there.. just my birthday.

Oh, I know what happened in may. I began a relationship with someone. It only lasted two months unfortunately, but when things aren't right, they aren't right. She and I are still great friends, and even though things didn't work out, I wouldn't change anything. She's happy with her boyfriend, and I'm really happy to have her as a friend.

June.. well that's an easy one. The band got a name, and played it's first show. We ran through a bunch of names before coming up with The Savages... The Snowballs, The SavageRs, Bunch of Savages, and a few more.
Our first show wasn't the most amazing beginning. We supported a band that sounded nothing like us, and the crowd that was there weren't exactly there to see us. I distinctly remember saying the following: "So.. has anyone heard of Elvis Presley?" ... and there were crickets. Crickets! Oh, until one hipster idiot said in a stupid voice "Is he on australian idol?" ... ugh.. hipsters. We were also a four-piece for that show interestingly.

Since then however, we've become a three piece (and at the moment, a two-piece) and played some amazing shows, mostly in Melbourne. We played once in Ballarat, and once in Geelong at The Nash, just before it closed down. We played one of the final gigs at the Barleycorn in Melbourne as well, which was a lot of fun.

But the biggest show that we played, was in fact our last show we've played as a full band at this point. It was also the hardest show to make happen.

Last year we saw a band called Batfoot!. This was the band that inspired Curt and I to start a pop/punk band. So when we saw that they were coming back to Victoria (they are from New South Wales) we wanted to play a show with them. So we got in touch with Craig, the Bass player/singer, and tried to get ourselves a slot on one of the shows.

Craig managed to get us a spot on their geelong show, but a few weeks later, we found out that The Nash, where the gig was meant to be, was closing down, and would be closed about 3 weeks before our show was scheduled.

So with very short notice, I emailed every single venue I'd played gigs at just about, and had no luck. The closest we got was an afternoon gig on the same day our original show was scheduled for. So it looked like we were going to have to cancel the show, which sucked. Then, this great little venue called IDGAFF had a cancellation for the night our show was meant to be, and they gave the night to us with about 8 days to spare!

So all went well, we played the show, and had the best time. We've got plans to go up to NSW next year some time and play some shows up there with Batfoot!, and just generally hang out and have a great time. I personally can't wait to do that, it'll be great to play shows up there, being that I lived up there until I was 10.


We also have plans to record our first EP/Album (depending on how many songs we get recorded) early next year, possibly even next month. Also, we'll be getting our first batch of Savages T-Shirts early next year so that's awesome too!

Also this year I applied for a Bachelor of Arts degree at University, and I got in. Unfortunately, after having a look at the campus, and how the classes worked, I basically figured out I physically couldn't handle that and the band. And being that the band was just getting on it's feet when the course was going to start, I decided to defer for now. I have until the end of january to decide if I want to start this semester, or defer it again, or just pass on the course altogether.


Some smaller things that happened... I bought/got 3 new guitars due to the Allans music store in ballarat closing. They had 3 Left-handed electric guitars left, and I got all three of them! Two squier strats, one being an affinity series, and the other a standard series, and one Schecter Omen. I absolutely love the Schecter, I only paid $315, reduced from $550. It plays like a much more expensive guitar, and is near perfect. I do wish I'd had the money to buy the next model up, which has coil-tapping (turning the humbucker pickups into single-coil pickups.. technical I know), but I'm so happy with the one I got.

I reached (and passed) walking every single day on my treadmill for a year. In fact now, I'm up to around 520 days. The next goal is 600, and obviously then 700, and finally 2 years. I'm thinking I may take a day off when I get to 1000... but I doubt it.

I finally got a gigging amp as well. Without it, playing in my band would almost not be possible. It's the loudest thing I've ever played through. Most of the time I have it on about 3 (out of 10) and get told it's too loud.

I got a laptop that lets me play minecraft without it overheating. As well as a lot of other things that it does well.

I also gave up alcohol completely, and stopped drinking caffeine.


Oh, and of course, I got a new car. My mum held a raffle through her social club, and they raised about $6000.. and I finally got a car that works, with air conditioning, a cd player, power windows... all standard things these days, but to me, having never had those things before, I finally feel like I have a modern car.

So that's my year basically.. ups and downs yes, but more ups than downs definitely, and especially in the second half of the year.

So thanks to all my friends and family for being awesome, especially my best mate Curt. And my Mum.

Also thanks to all the new friends I've met, you guys are all awesome and I'm so glad to have met you.

That's it really, I hope everyone enjoys their new year celebrations, stay safe, please be careful on the roads, don't drink too much, don't drink and drive.. don't sit on a firework as it's going off.. and most importantly have fun!

See you all in 2013!!

P.S If anyone lives on a state border where there's a time difference.. tonight you have the rare opportunity for time travel! Jump back and forth over the border.. and you'll be in 2012 on one side, and 2013 on the other! Spooky!!