Bestival Bender Bus – Sunday

so. sorry about the long delay in between posts, but thats just the way it is. live with it.

by sunday morning, festival fatigue had started to kick in. id spent the previous few days in some state of damp, and was getting over it a bit.. but none of that, it was the most bitchin day on the lineup, now that i had my little £6 program lanyard, i was organised. oh yeah.

so for sunday, i was amped about a few bands, ones that id gone to the festival knowing id be hyped about them – Baaba Maal from Senegal in the afternoon, something, something, then George Clinton and Parliament/Funkadelic for a glorious 2 hour super deadly cosmic nipple funk set.. and either side of that, Beardyman.. followed by Underworld..

the only spanner in the works – super strength festival rowdy juice. fucking brothers. why do you make that pear cider so nice, but have such long lines making me want to double up on pints every time?

meanwhile, in between beardyman’s super killer awesome beatbox set, and the mixed mud wrestling in the quagmire behind us, id set in motion a vicious hangover, caused by what was left of the vanilla vodka and lemonade we were drinking the night before, combined with warm cans of stella and said rowdy juice..

needless to say, i got way too excited during George Clinton and had to be carted back to the tent most of the way into Underworld.. who i couldnt even concentrate on.. rad. But when you see the biggest collection of pimps, a woman in gold spandex and roller skates, a guy wearing a giant nappie and they’re all playing the most outrageous funk and then to top that, they do a cover of James Brown – ‘The Payback’ you cant help but go over the top. At least thats what was going through my head at the time..

all in all.. awesome festival. the mud strangely mad it a little bit more exciting, purely because of the stereotype of the muddy english summer festival.. and the danger factor of the drunken walk back to the tent.

monday was hard to say the least. we knew we had at least 6 hours to kill from the time the tickets said we were getting the ferry til the bus back to london. It sounded easier when we were drunk and boisterous and all like ‘yeah lets get drunk again in the pub oh yeah!’ but in reality it was horrible. The ferry situation worked in our favour, cause we just arrived and jumped on a ferry we didnt have the right ticket for, and they just let us on, but when we went to ask if we could get an earlier bus, it was flat denial. Horrible bastards they are.. so it was get some fish and chips, then off to the pub for some pints..

but as it goes, by the time 6 came around and it was time to get the bus, me and marky were so knackered it was the most horrible return to civilisation you could imagine. Waiting for a bus after getting off the tube at Elephant & Castle covered in mud and smelling positively rancid is never fun. But we made it and the resulting shower fucking ruled.

i love festivals.

Flat White lovin

photos and canvases from the show that ive had up in soho.

thanks to everyone who’s gone to see it and everyone thats bought art from me. its been radical.

don’t worry flip. sunday’s coming. im just lazy, but its worth it.

Bestival Bender Bus – Saturday

So saturday.. holy mother of shit what an up and down day.. i felt fucken great, tucked up in my sleeping bag (so far dry) probably still drunk and had no idea of the puddle that was forming around my feet from the heavy rain outside.. Mark had already bit the bullet and went for a walk to figure out something to do, but no more than 20 minutes after id woken up, disaster struck again.. the puddle shifted and lo-and-behold my sleeping bag is soaked. shit. shit. double shit.

fuck it. i put on my pair of damp jeans, damp hoody, damp jacket and put my now destroyed phone (damp) in my pocket.. everything else seemed to have miraculously escaped the devastation.. i got up, and went and had a cuppa. lovely.

so soon after we sorted our brains out, the option to bail out and head back to london was quickly scratched.. the option to go back to town, buy a tent, grab a bite to eat that wasnt dirty festival food and go to the pub was starting to shine. it just turned out to be a mission, which a lot of other people seemed to be making as well.. so saturday so far – new tent? check. pint down the pub? check. still not dead from hypothermia? check. we were good to go. oh yeah!

once we had returned to the festival, we made the long hike through the quagmire to where we had been camping, emptied what was essentially a tarp at this stage, and pitched the new tent. result. then got onto the cans. straight down to the stage.. and who was on? the fucking human league. oh yeah! 80′s pop all the way.. mid set, i asked a bloke who had a programme to see who was playing, and found out the lineup for the afternoon/evening ahead.. turns out gary numan was on the main stage afterward the human league had finished their set in the big top.. i thought why not. check him out. marky went for a tactical afternoon nap and i went and drank some more festival rowdy juice.. it really gets you rowdy.. then on account of a combination of gary numan being shit, getting woken up by a puddle at 7:30 in the morning and being a little bit pissy, i went for the tactical snooze option. bad manouvre. by this stage i’d bought a program though which was a good manouvre..

turns out the specials and grace jones were the surprise acts. fuck. missed em. ah well.. its what you get.

by the time we’d got out shit sorted again, bright and refreshed, we hiked back to the main arena. oh yeah yeah roots manuva. just on. just like that. fuck yeah, which was kind’ve a bit shit, because it meant missing DJ Yoda and his AV show, but for a bit of rowdy dub action, it was awesome. Then to what i see now as probably the best show i saw all weekend, factoring in not expecting anything – Hot Chip fucken rule live. My god i was so fucking impressed by everything they were doing, even more when i noticed they were all dressed up like everyone else at the festival.. And dont worry Amy – i thought of you when they played Over and Over..

After that was a bit of a blur.. i know we went and saw Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, caught a bit of the nextmen in the sweatiest festival tent ive ever seen in my life.. then saw a bit of Amy Winehouse’s monster disappointment of a show.. seeing a highlight reel the other day i noticed she was struggling to keep her jaw straight. good one..

with vanilla vodka in the foggy tent

now i remember why it was a blur – the litre bottle of vodka we had brought down with us.. plus the super strength festival cider i kept buying and drinking really fast.. come 1:30 both of us had the drowsies (i had the rosies too) and piked it.. didnt miss much after that, had a fun day. back though the mud and dont know how we managed to make it without breaking our ankles..

so fuck you flip.. theres saturday

stay tuned for the bender bus rollin on.. sunday

bestival bender bus

so from what i can remember of bestival (now a week past.. bear with me) it was totally fucken rad.

I’d worked 6 days straight and 10 shifts up until that weekend – penance for asking for a whole weekend off – and by the thursday night i was completely knackered.. so i was ready to smash it.

actually, rewind just a minute.. my mate danny sorted me out with a pair of free tickets, so me and my other mate mark ‘muscles’ lawler were excited from the get go.. we didnt even know who was playing at all. all i could remember from a brief look at the website was george clinton and funkadelic, hot chip and amy smackhouse. while i was busting a nut working, marky sorted out how the fuck we were gonna get there, and courtesy of a cheap bus and an expensive ferry, we were on the isle of wight.

Too bad for us it was pissing down with rain.. like harder rain than i’d seen since melbourne flooded on christmas day 5 or 6 years ago.. Not boding well so far for the weekend, so first things first for the team rowdy boys.. pair of gumboots. then the pub. A cheeky couple of pints later, we’d jumped on a bus that was going towards the festival site, through more rain.. got to the festival (Robin Hill Country Park) and to our dismay, it started raining heavier. What do you do in that situation? Crack into the cans, what else? Brief chat to Rob from Reading over a can of Stella until the weather cleared up a little and then straight into the sea of mud.. as far as the eye can see. It really was everywhere.

We’d walked for fucken ages to try and find somewhere to camp and then disaster struck. Im talking disaster of all disasters.. So we’d found somewhere to camp, pulled out all our stuff and lo and behold, tent? check. pegs? check. beer? check. dryish patch of ground? check. tent poles? WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE DONT HAVE TENT POLES?? fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. After a quick stress smoke and another can, reality finally hit us and we just went ‘fuck it. lets get drunk’ a-la the dude.. Off to the main arena we went..

Friday Night. It was on. We were there. Cans were in our pockets ready for action.. We just didnt know who or when any of the bands were on.. lucky for us, we went into a tent and the breeders were playing. like the breeders all the way back from 1994 the breeders.. fuck yeah. after that, we went and got a few pints of rowdy juice and went to check out the main stage.. it was shit and we went back to the big top tent and up next was this radcore canadian two piece called chromeo, and i think at that stage flip called me.. a whole lotta yelling later, it was back to the serious business of getting smashed so much it didnt matter we were sleeping in a tent without poles that night, and dancing to some serious 80′s revival electro funk.. oh yeah..

Soon after, we were knackered.. back to the tent, through the mud.. into a tent without poles.

Stay tuned for Saturday.

and now for the very very latest in monkey land

so its been a while since ive managed to string sentences together enough to write anything resembling anything more than snippets of what ive been up to recently..

so here goes nothing. It turns out that I’ve been super busy in the past few weeks with work and the whole lets get drunk in london thing, and then on top of that, Cam from Flat White asked me to put up some artwork in his cafe.. I said ‘sure, why not.. when do you something up?’ he said ‘in a week and a half this current one comes down..’ holy mother of crap.. so i went straight to the art shop, bought some canvases, jumped on the tube at peak hour (not one of my more sensible decisions) and started deciding what the fuck i would do in the little time that i had off over the next week and a half (read: 2 days)

Turns out i managed just fine. Put the kettle on, roll some cigarettes and paint in between patches of rain.. good times.

2 days of fun

so all of this (and a few more ive done since) are all getting hung this evening, which makes for another fun tube ride into town..

more photos to come once everything is up..

and now for the super duper smash fest that was carnival..

one of about 10 streets.. in the immediate vicinity..

it was the descent into chaos from there.

the times i could remember to take my camera out.. and the time, mid bender that i thought it was a good idea to buy records.. but what a record it is. pretty much sums up my day

im gonna go put the kettle on. photos of the show once its up are to come..

holla. m

Serious New Equipment..

arrived last week in the post after a serious shit fight with british delivery services..
thats right.. its got a little monitor speaker, headphone jacks, line outs, an inbuilt pre-amp and best of all, runs on ac or batteries.

love it

Papa’s got a brand new camera

So i havent had much luck with cameras while ive been here.. Flip broke my first one, and then to exonerate himself, he bought one and sent it over for my birthday. What a legend. But, two weeks ago it got stolen at work.. pricks. So today completely impulsively went and bought a new one. Panasonic Lumix 8 megapixel

Its shiny.

so heres some new artwork

Tursen Takk!

and now the news..

flew in last night back to london after 5 (mostly sunny) days in Risor, Norway. Which means the plan changed again.. and again and again. Kept us on our toes, more to the point, kept Judith on her toes.. I was just happy to do whatever. So it turned out that funky Mark Lawler and his band of Vikings made changes to their plans (thanks for that boys!) and cut a little bit short their west coast adventure to drive to Risor to meet up with me and Judith. After a long and sunny walk further than we needed, me and Judith pitched a tent in the woods just outside of Risor on one of the bays thinking that the boys would arrive late the next day, so we settled in and managed to have a super relaxing time.. Mind you, at this stage, it was a beautiful day, and we had planned to spend the saturday lounging around and swimming all day..

Day2. Rain. Shit.. woke up to rain on the saturday, but after sleeping for around 14 hours, i didnt mind.. and funnily enough, neither did Judith.. she figured funky mark lawler and the vikings would arrive in town earlier, on account that it was raining pretty heavy in most of norway.. so instead of lounging around all day in a pair of ridiculously short yellow shorts, we sat out the day in a pub spending £6 on each pint.. good one norway. turns out she was right and the boys got there a couple hours earlier than expected. then the real booze-a-thon began. With Jacob and Jonas the snus eating shit talking champions of scandinavia. Skal!

Days 3-4 Weather began to pick up and more and more of the day was spent doing sweet fuck all. bought some prawns from the fish market and stuffed ourselves.. followed the next day by some weber action and more super drinking time.. involving whatever was in Jonas’ booze cupboard, which turns out was a lot..

then the sun came out. lovely. swimming with jellyfish is always an exciting prospect.. much funnier when you’re conditioned to think that jellyfish are only there to kill you, like most australians. made for a heartracing afternoon. that night – more beer. fuck these vikings can drink.

last day. woke up at like 2. more of sweet fuck all. checked the bus back to Torp.. cooked dinner for everyone. had a beer. caught the plane. not much to it really? fuck that. english public transport can suck a fuck. got back to stansted and had to wait for fucking ever to get though customs, then theres some shit with rail works, so the trains arent going, which means buses. twice as long and 15 times more uncomfortable meant we didnt get home til 3am or some shit like that.. pricks.

ah well.. it was all worth it. thanks to funky mark lawler and the merry vikings Jonas and Jacob.. thanks for letting us stay! Enjoy that sun lads! im envious.. Skal!

Man cuts off own head with chainsaw after flat is earmarked to be bulldozed by developers

actual title. fuck

link to the daily mail

and then it went north

..so there was a hectic couple of days where it was THE MOST IMPORTANT thing in the world to buy a ticket to norway to go hang out with funky mark lawler, so on the positive vibe there’ll be an international bender going on, the flights were booked. turns out funky mark and his marky bunch were going to be on their road trip 15 hours away on the other side of norway. ah well. its no-ones fault really.. who wouldve thought me of all people couldve been so proactive at buying plane tickets?

yeah my point exactly. still.. cant wait to get there

ps new menu at work means all work and no play makes brendan a dull boy. 16 hour day no breaks suck.

photos of some new work and the latest in the english summer of drink to come.. word