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.

Rest In Peace Paul Bearer.

Hi folks,

Now I normally don't post stuff about wrestling, and I especially try to keep posts that I've written for other blogs separate from this page, but one of my favourite wrestling personalities passed away today, and I've written a blog about it, so I decided to share it on here as well.

Hello folks, it's me, it's me, it's ... Dave. Also known as the Aussie Mouthpiece, and I'm back with my weekly blog.

Apologies for missing last week, my internet connection was screwy and I couldn't write or post anything.

This week I had intended to talk about Old School Raw. However, given the news we all recieved today, this blog is going to be quite different. This week, is my way of saying goodbye to one of my favourite characters, and more importantly, one of my favourite people in wrestling, William Moody (AKA Paul Bearer & Percy Pringle III)

As we all now know, William unfortunately passed away today, at only 58. This news seemed so shocking to me, and completely out of the blue. I found out probably the same as most people, through a status update on facebook. It really is the age of social media.

So I thought today that I would write about what Paul Bearer meant to me, and some of my favourite memories involving him, both on, and off TV.


When I first started watching WWE wrestling, it was 2003. Undertaker was coming to the ring on a bike, and had short hair. Regardless, something drew me to his character, and I started renting old VHS tapes from my local video store. I remember clearly, the first one that I rented was Wrestlemania XII. Undertaker vs Diesel. (Incidentally I was drawn to Wrestlemania XII because of Kevin Nash being a part of it, and me being a big WCW fan when I was a kid).

This was the first time I'd seen the "Deadman" Undertaker, and of course, his manager Paul Bearer. And what a match it was. And, what a pair they made. Over the next few years, as I completely fell in love with pro wrestling, I started watching as much as I could, and more specifically, learned all I could about the history of The Undertaker. I read all about Paul Bearer and Undertaker, from Ted DiBiase introducing Paul as Undertaker's manager after Brother Love wasn't working out, through to the Undertaker vs Undertaker, and of course, Paul Bearer betraying Undertaker and aligning himself with Mankind, and Vader among others.

And of course, how could I forget, Kane.

So fast forward a few months, and it's March 2004. It's Wrestlemania XX. The Undertaker is returning, and more importantly, The "Deadman" is returning.

Now, this was before I had Cable TV. I had to read about the results of Wrestlemania 20, but I do definitely remember downloading two very small, very bad quality clips of Undertaker's match. One being his entrance, and the other being the finish of the match. (I also remember them taking forever to download.. ahh, the days of dial up internet). But the first video began with Paul Bearer holding his urn up, and that familiar tolling of the bell. I must have watched them at least 50 times.

In the ensuing years, I picked up a lot of dvds, including the Wrestlemania and Royal Rumble Anthologies, so I got to see a lot of Undertaker matches, along with the Undertaker dvds that were released by the WWE.

I think the thing that drew me to The Undertaker and Paul Bearer was that they were completely unique characters. Everything about them was totally different to everything else going on in the WWF, even after the introduction of Kane. They were much darker, a great contrast to the over the top, cartoon like characters, and the Hulk Hogans and Ultimate Warriors of the early 90's. Paul Bearer's eerie voice, cutting through all the yelling and over the top shouting most characters would do, became iconic to me. And it complemented Undertaker's seemingly "death rattle" like voice, when he chose to utter a sentence or two.

I think something that we need to remember though, is that William Moody has been involved in wrestling for a lot longer than the Paul Bearer character has been in existence for. Before coming to the WWF in 1991, William was known as Percy Pringle III, and worked in the NWA territories, managing Rick Rude, Steve Austin, and even a certain wrestler who later on became The Undertaker. Also prior to arriving in the WWF, he did in fact complete a degree in mortuary science, and was certified as a funeral director and embalmer, something which would be instrumental in devising the Paul Bearer character. So, while a lot of us younger fans may know this man simply as Paul Bearer, we have to remember that William Moody put 44 years of his life into wrestling, and he should be remembered as such.


Now let's fast forward to June 2011, which is when I started writing my first wrestling blogs. I also started using twitter around the same time. After getting used to how things work on twitter and gaining a few followers, I decided to try my luck and tweet Paul Bearer. And to my delight, I got a reply back. This was, at least in recent years, my favourite thing about him. Just about every single time I would send him a tweet, be it something as simple as "have a nice day" or a specific question about some match I was watching at the time, or a general question, he always took the time to reply to me. Now I know that it really only takes a couple of seconds to reply to a tweet, but it's something I will never forget, and am greatly appreciative of.

It reminds me of a quote from Rob Zombie (which I will completely paraphrase). He was telling a story about people asking for autographs, and he said basically that he, as the celebrity won't remember the kid asking for him to sign something a week later, but that kid will remember the time he met Rob Zombie forever. So if he was a jerk, the kid would never forget that. And in the end it takes no time really to be a nice guy, and sign something.

And it's the same with tweeting. Every time I've ever gotten a tweet back from someone I look up to, or even just a favourite or a re-tweet, it makes me feel amazing, as I'm sure it does you too. I feel lucky that some of my favourite wrestlers have given a little piece of their time to respond to something I had to say. Wrestlers like Raven, and Road Dogg, even Dolph Ziggler. But my favourite replies always came from Paul Bearer. Like the one time I told him watching his shoot interview DVD's had really made me want to be a wrestling manager, and he replied with a witty "all that glitters, is not always gold". Or the time I said that the Undertaker/Kane program in 1998 would not have had the same impact if Paul wasn't a part of it, and he replied with a very humble "I disagree, but thank you", the man always took the time.

And Paul, I have to disagree with your "disagree", you sir, did make that program what it was. After now having watched the episodes of raw in their entirety, and seeing all the promos Paul cut after the burn incident, I can say that without a shadow of a doubt, it was Paul Bearer that made that story amazing, and epic, and wonderful to watch.

Now, one last thing. I've already seen some talk today on the interwebs about whether WWE will, should, or can incorporate this tragic news into the current story with Undertaker and CM Punk.

My thoughts are this: Firstly, Undertaker would have to sign off, and I'm sure he wouldn't go near it without Paul Bearer's family's permission. Secondly, if anyone can do it, it's CM Punk. Look at how well he did with the touchy subject of Jerry Lawler's heart attack. It could push the storyline into something a little more epic, but I do think it would completely 100% guarantee an Undertaker win (not that it's not already guaranteed, but still).

However... I don't know that it's the right way to go, but having said that, I'd like to think Paul Bearer would be ok with it if they do go down that road.

My theory on what should happen, and I really hope this is the way they go, or at least something like this. They should let The Undertaker come out to the ring next week on Raw, and talk. He doesn't necessarily need to break character, but at this point it really doesn't matter if he does. I feel like he should be given the opportunity, and Paul Bearer should be given the respect he deserves, and a proper send off.

Maybe they do that and then Punk interrupts (think of the heat!). Maybe they just let Undertaker speak, maybe even a tribute video. I think Paul Bearer should be acknowledged, and time should be allocated to give him a small, public goodbye.

Whatever happens, this Wrestlemania will be just a little less bright, knowing that Paul Bearer isn't around to see it.

So thank you Paul, thank you for all the memories, for all the amazing promos, for taking the time to reply to a no-name wrestling blogger, and for giving us so many years of your life, just to entertain us. Thank you for everything. You will be missed.

RIP.

The second weigh in!

Hey folks,

I'm back with another blog! This time it's just a short update on how my diet is going.. or "meat-tox". I'm sure some of you have seen the videos I've put up and therefore know that it is in fact going well. And some of you would also have seen the last post I wrote with some of those videos in it as well.

Today is day 11. As of today, Day 11, I have lost approximately 3.5 kilos. So it's fair to say, it's working.

My diet has mainly been the same each day, at least the lunch portion:
1 Roll, with Ham (or other sandwich meat), and then some other protein-rich foods on the side, like kabana, or cheese, or salami sticks (or "twiggy sticks"), and a small amount of 70% cocoa dark chocolate.

No snacks.

Dinner has been one of two things; either something that I have in my freezer, mainly chicken, mainly about 400g in total weight, with no sides, which means no chips, no hash browns, wedges, or vegetables, or anything like that.

The other option for dinner has been take-away. Being either McDonalds, or KFC. My choices from McDonalds have been the Triple Cheeseburger, The Double Quarter Pounder and a McDouble.
And from KFC, 10 "wicked wings", or (on tuesdays because they have a deal at the moment) 9 pieces of original recipe chicken.

To drink I have had water. And occasionally, some soft drink, but not much. And one or two small chocolate milk cartons. Oh and regular milk too.

So I've cut out snacking on things like regular chocolates, or maltesers, or pretzels, or anything at all really. I've cut out buying meals from take away places, so that I don't get chips, or potato and gravy, or drinks. And while you may look at what I buy from McDonalds and say "that's too much" ... just remember that while it's too much for you, and it's bad for you, I've lost 3.5 kilos in 11 days while eating that. It's about the protein, and to a lesser extent, the fat. Yes, there are carbs in the rolls, and the buns, but that is basically the only carbs I'm eating, or .. at least the only "high carb" foods.

Remember, my condition is such that my body can't process carbs into energy, and therefore has to use other energy sources, like protein and fat. When I do eat carbs, they are turned into fats and stored that way (hence the struggle to lose weight), or at least the part that would normally be used for energy is, as I can't "make" it, or store it.

So my body finds alternate ways of fuelling itself. This is where the protein and fat comes into it. Fat is used as energy when exercising slowly (i can't remember where i heard that, but it was somewhere that I trust), and as I only walk on my treadmill at an average of about 2.4 km/h, I'm pretty sure that counts as slow. And Protein is basically instant energy. It can't be stored up for later use though. And if fats are stored.. well.. you get fat obviously.

So, while you may think I'm eating unhealthily, or I'm not getting enough nutrients, or vitamins, or any of that stuff, before you start telling me (because believe me, people tell me how to eat a lot), just remember I'm not like you. And more importantly, this diet is working for me. So don't try to fix something that isn't broken.

Oh, and last time my cholesterol was checked, it was 3.5. The LOW end of normal.

Facts.

Also remember one can take vitamin supplements.

Thanks for reading folks, stay tuned for more updates, both here, and on my youtube channel.

www.youtube.com/davidgrimsonmusic

P.s I do NOT recommend anyone who does not have my condition to try this diet. You will get fat. And you will blame me, and I don't need that!

P.P.s I'm not gloating about being able to eat Take-away. It's simply an easy way for me to get what I need for my body to work.

The weigh in!

Hey folks,

Really quick post today, but I just wanted to give you all an update on my new dieting and meat-tox and what not. I decided to weigh myself this morning (Saturday morning), just to see if there'd been any improvement since starting this new diet on Tuesday. I was expecting maybe to lose a couple hundred grams, but to my surprise, the numbers had changed quite a bit more than that.

Here's a quick video in which I talk about just what that change was.

Take a look, and like, share, comment, subscribe, tweet, post, pin, add and all the usual social media stuff!

Follow me @D_Grimson on twitter, and like my facebook pages!
www.facebook.com/DavidGrimsonMusic
www.facebook.com/TheSavages37

Also just quickly, if anyone is interested in music lessons, I'm starting up skype music lessons as soon as I get some interest, so let me know on here, or go to www.facebook.com/DavidGrimsonOnlineMusicLessons

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!

The Meat-tox

Hey guys, really quick post today... I only have 6 minutes before the Royal Rumble starts, and I don't want to miss it.

So, here it is. I've put on some weight again recently, and that's not a good thing for me, for a lot of reasons. SO, I'm starting what I'm going to call a "meat-tox" tomorrow. Think of it the same way as a detox, but with meat.

The reason it's a Meat-tox, is because if I did a detox, my body would literally stop working and start eating itself. Scary huh?

The basic idea is that I'm going to completely stop eating all the stuff that I know is really bad for me that I've been eating too much of recently, and also to really cut back in general on the amount of carbs I eat, because carbs are not my friend.

To help keep myself accountable I'm going to be doing video diaries and blogs about how I'm going. Firstly I'm trying for a month, to see how well it works, and if there's any little tweaks I need to do to keep things going well.

                                                So here's the first video diary entry thing.



Wish me luck!

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.