xx aa

I always thought that the Australian Idol Grand Final would be so much cooler if we fought it out, Thunderdome style ala Mad MAx III.
Marcia could be Tina Turner, and Kyle could be Angry Anderson.

A cage-match fight on Kung Fu wires with chainsaws to decide a winner of Australian Idol.

Ok, maybe voting is a better option, but I think my idea has legs.

Remember last week I was rattling on about manifesting your reality?

Well looky here..

All afternoon as I drove to John Foreman’s show I listened to Mötorhead’s amazingly cool and groundbreaking tough-as-fuck album Ace Of Spades.
Then I got to thinking about Mad Max.
I pop on Youtube and someone’s edited the two things I was on about today into one.
I love the universe we live in..

xx aa

PS: It’s weird watching this tonight, as it’s about thirty degrees, midnight, and the hot Sydney air smells of bushfires, while across the bay from me, someone’s playing Bel Biv De Voe really loud. What a wierd night.
Turn it up.
Lemmy+Phily the animal Taylor+Mel Gibson+lots of Ford V8s fanging around rural Victoria=rad late night fun.

Five years ago, I was shown how to stand up on a surfboard by the Legend who was big in the 80′s, Brad Davis. For two years, that board stayed on my balcony gathering dust until I got a stoke up about surfing again after being sent to cover the Billabong Pro in Tahiti.

Later that year, we went on one of the legendary liver-challenging Channel [v] conferences down in Bateman’s Bay, and one of the bonding exercises we did was to go surfing. I knew of this so I strapped my board to the roof and took it to conference with me.
Before we went surfing, Billabong, who were doing a lot of work with us at the time, had sent a guy to talk to these TV people about surfing, and why people surf – so that we could make great TV together.

That guy who came to chat was Dave Rastovich. He is a freesurfer, which means his sponsorship revolves around not-competing, but travelling the world surfing. Yes, he is paid to come up with great places to go and crews of people to go with, and just go surfing.
On top of that, he’s easily one of the most grounded, compassionate, passionate, relaxed, musical, spiritual, focused and centred humans I’ve ever breathed the same air with.

After he’d addressed the room, we all went down to the beach for a paddle. It was so cool, all the Channel [v] people flapping about in the water on beginner boards, it was great fun. I knew that Dave was a very keen pracitioner of yoga, and I was in the middle of a course myself – so I challenged him to do a lotus position on the big beginner board he was sitting on, to which he grinned and said “yeah I reckon I could”.

So Dave sat there in the water, not crossing his legs, and I thought he’d forgot about it. A wave came, he whistled me on it and I paddled on. I stood up, and after a few months out of the water from a knee injury, there I was on a walling wave again – it felt fantastic. I was going left on the wave, and heard a whistle from my right, thinking I was dropping in on someone, I looked around to see, right up on the nose of his board, sitting in a perfect lotus position, Dave Rastovich smiling back at me, steering his way down the wave with his bum. The smile on his face was something I will never forget – I wanted that smile on my face, and I now knew how to get it.

Imagine, if you will, you’re a guitar player being on stage and Jimi hendrix popping up alongside for a jam and a chat, you’re playing soccer and Ronaldinho passes the ball to you, or you’re a photographer shooting a scene and Helmut Newton sidling up alongside to shoot some frames with you, or a comedian and Bill Hicks drops in to wax lyrical about the inequalities of the sexes with you – that’s how amazing it was to be sitting in the line up with this guy for me. He’s the very reason I even surf.

Cut to about a year later, and [v] have organised a meeting with the Billabong guys, us, and the heads of the record companies – wonderful because they all surf. They invited a few legend Billabong crew along, including Luke Egan and Rasta. One night, we sat at the long, long tables of the Point Lookout Hotel (top ten pubs on Earth) and he told me about a movie he wanted to do.

He wanted to fill a house with musicians who surf, with the idea of making the soundtrack to the surf film as they made the movie.
To surf in the day, jam at night, jam when the surf’s not on, surf when it was. He spoke with such passion about the idea and described the concept very clearly to me.

So it was that I found myself out in the water for a few waves early yesterday morning, and as I paddled over to the South End of my beach I see a guy on an orange board who’s surfing like I breathe – effortlessly.
I caught a wave myself, and as I paddled back, there he was again, Rasta. He gave me a wink as he took of on a wave and said hello.
I’m pretty good around my heroes, so I kept a lid on this one, but inside I couldn’t believe it.

We sat in the water and a quick chat about his music, about his new film Life Like Liquid and about his board.
I dialled up his trailer on youtube, and it’s exactly what he’d described to me two years ago, to the letter.
He had taken an idea and created it into reality.

Dave’s got three of the greatest surf cinematographers ever to live contributing on his new film.
Jack McCoy, Albert Falzon and George Greenough shooting for your movie is like having Kubrick, Stone and Hitchcock working on your project. Incredible.

The power of having an idea, and then having every descision in your life moving towards that idea, is truly incredible.
It’s a power we all possess, yet sometimes forget we have.
By simply following this concept – you can create an idea into a reality.

I’d go surfing, but the waves are shit right now, so I’ll watch surf movies instead.
xx aa

Many, many years ago, in the deep deserts of California, a group of guys used to go waaaaay out into the hills, crank up generators, party and play songs until the dawn. A select few hundred people joined them, drank and danced along.

This band of friends would eventually become one of the most influential bands of the nineties, and evolve into the baddest-ever rock lords that are QOTSA.

I am talking about Kyuss.

They absofuckinlootly rule.

A few things are important about this clip.

1: Do whatever you want, do it with commitment, do it for fun, and do it with passion and you’ll find success.
2: Document everything that you do, it makes it more important if there’s a record of it.
3: Give it stacks when you do it, because lifes to short to fuck about.
4: Josh Homme is a dead-set legend and looks really young here, possibly because he was only 19.
5: Next time you have a party, book a band. You never know who they may turn out to be.

So slip on your old flannel, grow a goatee and eat up the joy that is Kyuss, on a shitty hi-8 camera, in a desert, far away from civilisation, powered by generators, beer and passion, rockin’ the fuck out.

xx aa

Forget the G-String.

Here comes the GPod.

With Japlish Translat-o-tron Goodness.

xx aa

I love my country, I love where I live.

Doing my job, every day, many times a day, people tend to just chime in with their comments about Idol when they pass me in the street, in a cab, at the lights, in the lift, wherever.
I was surfing off a point in Manly yesterday, 500m from shore and some guy paddles past me saying “Dean should have gone”.
I love that about my job! I am very lucky to have work that is so much to so many people.

So bearing this in mind, allow me to add in a twist that’s been happening since Monday night.
The common call to follow up “Dean should have gone” or “How great’s Damien” is (drumroll…)

“Yeah, but now it’s not really Australian Idol is it?”

Eck-fucking-scuse me?

“I mean none of them are real Aussies are they?”

What?

“I mean one’s South African, one’s Irish and one’s Indonesian.”

Yes indeed, people actually say this to my face.

I calmly point out that I’m an immigrant too, and that both Damien and Dean are Australian Citizens, and that being part Aboriginal, Jessica’s more Australian than every whitey here.

It’s two thousand and fucking six.
Do they not teach in schools that this country was built on immigration?
When I went to school, three out of five of my mates’ parents had an accent.

Not only that, the other day, I see this:

That’s not Yumi.
I know that all those Asians look the same to you, and I know it was an after party, and I know the photo was probably sent in my some punter, but please Mr/Ms Sub Editor of S magazine, there’s plenty of other photos of Yumi on the ‘net to cross check with.

We are a country based on giving people a better chance at life than that they would have had in their homeland.
Our forefathers were criminals for fuck’s sake!!
We are a nation of people that have brought their cultures with them and celebrate those cultures to make them feel closer to home – do you think the Aboriginals had Christmas or Easter?
Those cultural differences are what make us Australian.

It is only through the respect, education and acceptance of those cultural differences between that makes our nation great.

So guess what, whitebreads!
You live in an invaded country stolen from a race of brown people, and you, your parents and everyone else you know, is an immigrant or descended from immigrants.
Australia is a society built on people from all parts of the world, including Irish, South African, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, and in a few days, Kazakhs.

We are all Australians.
THIS is Australia. Love it or leave.

xx aa

Just because school is ending soon doesn’t mean your child should stop reading.

The greatest kids’ book of all time has just been released.