Digging deep again.

Last week we saw my diary, now let's look at some school work.

First I gotta talk about the craziest thing that happened with last week’s look into my 17 year old brain through my year 12 diary.

I love all your reactions though there was one story that flipped me.

Warwick “Wok” Holt and I worked together at Shock Records sometime in the early 2000s. At the time he had just finished his doco about Star Wars super fans, The PhanDom Menace. Our careers went to completely different places from that office in Northcote. Me… well, I’m here, I suppose, and Wok, he moved on to comedy writing, which took him to write at The Glass House, Good News Week and be head writer at The Project for years.

Anyway, Wok sees this page last week and gives his screen the a big bunch of the WTFs…

That pink bit in the corner.

This…

Wok wrote that!

He was 17 too when he wrote it as page filler in FOUL’s newsletter (Friends Of Unnatural Llamas, a Melbourne Uni club dedicated to the absurd). I have no idea how I got the newsletter back then. I suspect it was lying around in a record shop or somewhere like Polyester Books, or I might have gone to Melbourne Uni open day… who knows.

It’s amazing now that I chose it to cut out way back then and can only imagine the shock when he read it last week.

I remember thinking that last line, “Oh yeah, I’ve got dozens’ replied Alph” was hilarious, and I’ve often thought about it over the years — especially when I read over the top biblical/fancy arse style writing.

Oh yeah, I’ve got dozens cuts through sludge so well.

No wonder I cut it out.

You can have a look at all the wonderful stuff Wok has done in comedy at his Milestone page (link).

I’ve also found a bunch of my year 12 and first year uni English essays.

This week in my dig out of my mum and dad’s sheds I found a little folder of essays. I won’t put you through what I wrote in my creative writing stories.

This note from a teacher should give you an idea of what I’ve saved you from reading…

There’s a story about a singer in a band dying of alcohol poisoning, and a dramatisation of Tom Waits’ most depressing song, Kentucky Avenue. Both stories are quite crappy even for a kid, but they earned their “Very Good” and “Satisfactory Plus” scores.

Of course I wrote about footy.

There’s an essay inside the folder which isn’t much different to what I would write today. I mean, look at the title page…

It’s written in the eyes of a kid called Johnny Duffy (geez, my Cult fandom was out of hand back then), working at the game selling Football Record, the magazine you’d get at the game.

While it’s trying to celebrate the game, it’s quite bleak…

The elderly are the only people who are genuine to him when buying Johnny’s football records. He envies the smiling faces at the football. He envies the boys his age accompanied by their fathers. The boys envy Johnny for getting paid to go to the football.

That’s quite the vibe shift from something I wrote for the work I do earlier this week.

Again, it’s about fathers, kids and footy.

It’s not going anywhere so I may as well publish it here.

Here goes.

My little guy, Fred had his first pouring rain footy training last week.

I love how the under 9s ploughed through and winced at the slap of hard footballs hitting their freezing hands.

Helping out on the tackle dummies, I got just as wet.

Fast forward to the weekend, we went to to the MCG to see our magpies win perfectly, and even better, Fred won the hamburger voucher for his game and the work on blasting out of the packs he put in at that training earlier in the week.

A new Pulp album just dropped and this song is their latest song about a lady whose name ends with ‘ah’.

My women in sport essay from the olden days shows that I’ve been on about this stuff for years.

Much unlike this newsletter, I got straight to the point.

You tell them, dot matrix printer!

And here’s an interesting point about horse racing…

… written 22 years before The Daily Telegraph gave their Sportswoman of the Year… TO A FARKEN HORSE.

It’s cycling season in Europe but nothing beats Big Jim’s boozy bike ride to Braemar.

Give yourself time and watch it to the end.

It’s magnificent.

Here’s a blast from the past.

Way back in the olden Wednesdays you’d go to the Great Britain to see a band for $2 like the Fireballs, Brokenhead or if you were lucky a band on the up like Tumbleweed or You Am I, then find someone with a pass to Chasers Hard and Fast… and then before you knew it, it was Thursday. I lived in Geelong at the time so getting a train back in time for the first lecture at Waurn Ponds could get quite difficult.

It was a great night.

Stones, Cult, Who, Helmet, Janes Addiction, Primal Scream (met Bobby there one night), Archers of Loaf, bad metal… you get the drift. Saw some good bands play there too. Killdozer, Supersuckers, and the Poppin Mommas from Geelong played nude one night. I liked that band (their best song was Don’t F*ck With Me, I’ve Had a C*nt of a Day), but it wasn’t a pretty sight. Someone took a photo and The Truth published it.

Those were the days, huh.

The weirdest prerequisite I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen A LOT of weird job prerequisites in my time.

It’s from a job ad to work at Lululemon’s head office.

What kind of bullshit does this even mean? What on earth happened for the geniuses in HR to even contemplate writing that down, let alone publishing it in a job ad?

Was there an accident? Did the accident involve lycra? What did it smell like in there when whatever happened happened? Was a fire engine called in? Did anyone get hurt? Was it something someone said? Did someone do something awfully embarrassing when It’s Raining Men was played on the office stereo? Is there footage?

The mind boggles.

This from a first year tutor in 1991 could have easily been written about the newsletter you’re reading now.

Nailed it.

I read the essay.

Credit minus was a little unfair.

He seemed to like a lot of it in his red pen comments.