If I made my dreams into a tv series, I’d be extremely rich.

I wonder if The Twilight Zone series came about because some guy decided to start writing his dreams down and getting actors to star in said dreams.

I rarely remember my dreams but when I do, they are seriously spectacular. Very David Lynch. A little bit Stanley Kubrick. Super colorful and not at all related to the reality television family of genres AT ALL.

These dreams are more often than not EXTREMELY disturbing and usually involve death. I once had a dream I was in the back of a car that was being followed by a purple corpse on a motorbike. It was impressive that this cadaver managed to keep the bike upright and on the right side of the road, being dead and decomposing and all.

I had another dream that was set in The Entrance on the Central Coast, where I grew up. There’s a grassy hill where families take their kids to eat fish and chips and just chill out. In the dream, this grassy hill was populated with loads of families and picnic blankets. And a lion amongst the picnic blankets. I looked up and there were a bazillion different coloured birds in the sky, with only 1 pink bird amongst them. The lion singled the pink bird out, pounced and then kind of flew (without wings) to the bird, grabbed it in his mouth, and then brought it back down to the ground to tear apart near the families. It was uncomfortable. Then it left a bloody carcass which my Mum collected and placed in a silver basin which just appeared in the middle of the park. This behaviour is very uncharacteristic of Mum, she would ordinarily know that it would be more helpful to bin the bloody bird. Weird.

That dream is kind of like this, but different:

It is what it looks like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eTzYEUW_0g

Back to the dreams. I also ate a whole lot of blue cheese this year and one night I had a dream that I had to look after a one-eyed spineless jelly baby which was silently screaming and simultaneously shrinking. It was blue and eventually shrunk to the size of an action figure. It died, stiffened and resembled…an action figure. With no skin.

Scary stuff. As if you wouldn’t pay good money to see that dramatized. Am I right?!

I really like AOR on some levels.

"I burn for you, what am I gonna do?"

You’ve heard of MOR (Middle of the road) as a genre, right? Meet MOR’s dorky Dad- AOR. AOR stands for Adult Oriented Rock. Think Farnsy, to a lesser extent think Diesel, but most definitely think Michael Bolton. Attractive men (often with long hair) singing about feelings. Hitting high notes. Being distant.
My parents never listened to much music when I was a kid. They had a Carpenters tape and a Seekers tape and maybe one Beatles album. Sounds kind of creepy, hey? I had a fun childhood anyway but it meant that I was left to my own devices to figure out what sort of music I liked.

Besides really enjoying the hymns from the Catholic school I went to (particularly “Welcome to the Family” with its saucy lyric – “May words of love be on our lips with everything we say”), it turned out I really liked this beautiful song by RICHARD MARX:

Add to that Julian Lennon’s “Saltwater”, the killer dream team single “All For Love” by Sting! Rod Stewart! and Bryan Adams! and local AOR hits by talents Rick Price – “Heaven Only Knows” & Southern Sons – “You Were There”. I was a bonafide AOR nut. My sister Carla gave me a KLF “Justified & Ancient” cassingle and I was like “What the fuck is this shit? Where’s the Meatloaf album??”

I haven’t really listened to a lot of this stuff since early high school. I got a bit embarrassed about it, seeing as I was now into really cool stuff like Tracy Bonham, Presidents of The United States of America and Bush.

And then I worked at Utopia Records and found a few more goodies like war rampage musclemen leather fetish AOR act – Manowar and the fucking amazing 2007 solo album by Kiss lead singer Paul Stanley.

There is a lot of AOR stuff out there. And it’s good. I hate how hipsters come in and decide what makes a good song and what’s a cheesy piece of shit. Tell me how different these two bands sound when you close your eyes? Not much. It’s all in the production and packaging.

AOR can be cool.

The shame associated with being a Sex & The City Fan

I paid $18 to see these women on the big screen last week.

What’s wrong with me??? I’ve been trying to process this for nigh on 10 years and I still can’t figure it out. Even friends of mine who know me well are shocked when they enter my loungeroom and see my Sex & The City- The Complete Series boxset, packaged in a girly pink & black shoe box taking pride of place at the top of my dvd shelf, right next to The Stanley Kubrick Collection.

My new housemate Emma is offended by SATC’s (let’s abbreviate, shall we?) materialistic angle, but she’s been watching it and I reckon she secretly likes the show. I don’t even pay attention to the money & fashion side of things. I think I like the characters. I think this show takes advantage of a straight woman when she’s single/post-break-up/jaded/vulnerable and sucks them in with their ridicule of the male characters & cheesy clever puns. You turn around 5 years later and there you are with a $260 pink & black shoe box ruining your indie cred in the loungeroom.

I think I’ve only ever met 1 (one) straight male who likes this show. My manager Nik is a fan. He says he’s comfortable with his manhood and if other guys were, they’d love it too. But he also really likes movies like “Can’t Hardly Wait” so maybe he’s just gay. Gay guys love SATC (generalisation). I’d like to get a clear break-down of SATC’s demographic audience. I wonder if any old grannies like it. I wonder if it’s the modern-day equivalent to Mills & Boon novels that my Mum & Aunties used to read voraciously and swap as if they were collector cards. I wonder if they’ll keep making more and more movies and if movie ticket prices will keep rising and if one day I’ll find myself handing over $100 to see “Sex & The City 8- Wrinkled, but Still SEXY!” at the cinemas.

Please help me, this is a disease.

Why I love The Carpenters…

Angus & Julia Stone? No. I choose The Carpenters as my bro/sis wonder team of all time.

Call me crazy, poo-poo my taste, slag me off on your bogspot, see if I care. I LOVE THE CARPENTERS.

My love for Karen is a no-brainer. Her voice is quite simply one of the best I have ever heard. Her lung capacity was out of this world. In the early years she would drum AND sing those beautiful power ballads and she had a see-through drum kit! I have a photo of it on my wall…I’m getting side-tracked, we’ll come back to Karen but let’s focus on Richard for a moment. I like Richard’s lisp. I like it when he gives himself little lines to sing immediately after Karen has just wowed everyone like in this part of “This Masqerade”…

This Masquerade

What a great guy. I know I’m making fun of him but I really do think he’s great. He did all that multi-track stuff that makes their voices sound so thick and warm. You know who he learned that from? Les Paul. You know who else learned that from Les Paul? Brian Wilson. You know who Les Paul is?

Close but no cigar.

Try again.

This guy.

Any band that The Shaggs like is a band worth checking out. Shoobeedoolanglang.

Laura

Oh, I dunno what I’m bloody doing here.

Now if I could only change the font…in the meantime check out my seriously mutilated lips…