Girly soundy stories

Having worked as a sound engineer, doing live and studio sound in the past, I have frequently been astonished by some people’s reactions to having a girl doing the job. I was never one for good behaviour at gigs and had a great time as result. As a result these stories below were always a good story to tell your mates later.

Once I was setting up a band ready to record. I got the guys in the band to set up their music gear in all the appropriate places. Turned on all the studio gear, put a fresh reel to reel tape on (yep, ‘twas some time ago). Got out all the microphones and stands and set them up. Plugging things in, lugging things around, marking up the instruments on the desk for each track for which mic it matched and so on. Once this was all completed I asked the drummer if he could go sit behind the drums and start hitting the drums so that I could do an EQ on each drum. He ignored me and the boys cracked open beers and lit up doobies. After about half an hour I asked them when they wanted to get started. The response I got was... “Shouldn’t we wait for the sound guy to show up? Maybe you should give him a call?” So I asked them who they thought I was. “Well, your boyfriend is pretty late. Tell him to hurry up.” So I told them, “I am the sound guy”. You should have seen their faces. Another time, I was doing live sound, and this “friend of the band” kept telling me to “do this” and “do that”... that I should bump up some particular frequency, quoted in numbers, on some particular instruments, and it was unrelenting. I queried him... “How do you know all this stuff?” He said he read it in some magazine. So I said, “Alright then, you do it. I am off to the loo and to get a beer.” So there I was standing at the bar watching this guy, enjoying my beer, and he was shitting in his pants. He kept moving knobs and buttons but then putting back how they were. He started looking around for me. Eventually I felt sorry enough for him to go back. “Where the hell have you been? Thank god you are back.” “Oh, I was having a beer. I figured you were an expert and knew what to do.” Sound story number three. I was mixing a very loud punkish band at a scooter club convention and the scooter girls, who prefer ska and Motown, were disturbed by the sound and volume and kept coming over and screaming at me to turn it down. So I did. I put all the faders on zero. It didn’t make two shits difference. So there I was, having a lovely time, getting screamed at again, and I started laughing my head off. I let them yell for a bit more and then showed them that everything was on zero and they couldn’t understand it. Not one bit. They just got madder at me, so off I walked to the dance floor for a bit of a sway while they stood at the desk freaking out and they came and physically dragged me back to the desk. So I literally turned it off and showed them this, but of course it was still loud as fuck. At this point they finally clicked on and left me alone. No apologies mind you. Never is when you are a soundy.

I like a good burlesque show, but is it art?

I ask myself this question because our local Fringe Festival has had a penchant for burlesque two years running. The first year it made sense as they had acquired the perfect venue to showcase this kind of performance but now I find myself longing for some real cutting edge confrontational art events.

So rather than delve straight into talking about burlesque I thought I would consider what is a Fringe Festival. In my mind such a festival is largely not curated and happens on the fringes of a main festival which is curated. This means that a fringe should be available to one and all, professional or amateur to participate, in any art form.

I feel it should be a platform for artists to be able to try out new and risky ideas.

So, if a Fringe Festival is largely one “art” form, then it probably is curated and not really a fringe event.

Given the open nature of fringe then burlesque should be welcome to be a part of the event, but if this is at the expense of diversity then I start to question what is going on.

As a female performer who is quite comfortable with my body and not a prude by any means, I would like to see more women involved that don’t feel the need to show some tittie in order to be involved. Or vice versa..... guys that want to simply create without feeling pressured to be a particular kind of show man.

So is burlesque art? There are a million sites that talk about the art of burlesque, but the references are the same as the art of strip tease. Maybe this is something that burlesque artists need to address? There is also an art to cooking. But does that make it art?

Art is well known for its ability to encourage dialogue. Some of the burlesque shows I saw at the fringe last year succeeded in this respect. They had messages in their show, albeit in a satirical manner.

So.... See you at the burlesque. I’ll be having a bevvie and enjoying myself immensely, but I don’t know if I will feel like I am at a fringe art event, but I will be having a good time.

And just for invasion day in a couple of day (Australia Day)... here is a swell image to get you in the mood.

I wonder....

Where the hell do I get these stupid ideas from?

Boobs, titties, norks and pendulums.

I wonder what it's like to have big boobs?

All I ever hear about from women with big boobs is how problematic they are. I suspect this is only because they feel sorry for me.

Not sure they should bother.

"Oh, it's really awful. Guys always talk to my boobs and not to my face"

Diddums you silly bitch. Maybe if you didn't wear a low cut top with that massive cleavage they would look somewhere else? Give them a break. Even I cant help looking at that!!!

Then the next statement goes like this...
"I bought this top and its really annoying. It keeps riding down and showing my tits"

That's right chickadee.... it's a low cut top and your large pendulums are going to wiggle around and gravity is in action.

"And then I have to keep pulling it up"
and wiggling your tits???????

Then there is the sleep story...
"Oh, it's so horrible. My tits are so big I wake up in the middle of the night with my tits under my armpit and I am squashing them"

OW! That actually sounds painful.

Then there's the girls with the huge norks that tell me...

"You are so SKINNY! Maybe you should see someone about your anorexia"

Jezzus! I am not anorexic. I love food. I just burn up energy jumping around because I am  not worrying about my tits.

Imagine if I said....
"You are so FAT! Maybe you should see someone about your eating problem"
FARK... I'd go down like a ton of bricks.

So what would I be like with big boobusses?
I have to admit, that it could be kind of fun.
The mind does boggle.

Wanker Beer

After feasting your eyes on this illustrious beer bottle label one would be excused to conclude that this is the perfect beer for the habitual wanker. However, I was disappointed to learn after buying a bottle that the joke was lost on my american friends and that they didn't understand why I was laughing so goddam hard that tears were running down my cheeks. I was advised not to buy it given it is not very nice beer. But I did of course and drinking it I could not help wonder if anyone had spoofed into it at some point in the production. People from the antipodes simply cant drink this beer without having these kind of thoughts, and I am not entirely convinced that Mr Wanker of the Wanker Beer Brewing Company is completely in the dark over this.... just check out this video. 

Wanker Beer photo shoot video

Best comment to the video would have to be "I'm a wanker and I drink beer".

Well guess what mate? So do I, but not at the same time.

Well then, why don’t you just piss off then!

On the weekend I was driving home and saw a sign that said ...

Psychic Fair, 6 April, Town Hall.

....and it occurred to me that if they were really psychic they wouldn’t need a bloody sign. They would just know it was on.

This reminds me of the number of times people have told me that I am clairvoyant, but I suspect they are just getting confused with my name.

... and how about this one?

 “What star sign are you?” 

“Aries”

“Ah!!! That explains everything!”

Really? What does it explain apart from the fact that I am born somewhere between this date and that? 


Does it explain the overuse of the word experimental by bands playing 4/4 beat who think they are really out there when they aren't? I don't think so. Does it explain why my tits hurt today? Somehow I doubt it. I could clearly go on and on here so I will refrain.... 

The most annoying part about this exclamation "That explains everything" is that these people usually refuse to tell me what they think it explains and often go on to tell me that they don’t really get along with Aries very well and are not compatible with them. 

“If you are going to be like that with everyone that tells you they are Aries I am not fucking surprised!”

Tits and testicles

Someone asked me the other day if my boobs were saggy and I am pleased to report that the answer is no. I explained that they passed the pencil test. That's where you place a pencil under your tit and if it stays.... saggy tits. Admittedly I dont have big ones, but they are actually a size B which is bigger than I would have expected given I was probably AAA at age 18. In fact they seem to keep growing albeit very slowly, and one seems to be growing faster than the other one which gives me an excuse to play with them, not that I need one.

I do recall being called ironing board at high school. Ironically this was by the girls whose tits were super saggy at age 16. These were the girls that the guys would go "Cor! She's alright!" over. Little did they know that her over the shoulder boulder holders were working hard to keep them off her stomach, and from what I accidently copped an eye full of in the school pool change room, were not a pretty sight. Nipples at the bottom of the hang and stretch marks.

In response to the incessant bullying I made a badge that I wore on my uniform that proudly stated "flat not fat". That shut them up but also got me sent to the head office.

I finally escaped the wrath of bogan high school bitches and went on to do better things like play with rams balls. You see when I got to uni we had a lab class with rams. I was reminded of these pendulous boob items in the form of rams balls. Hot rams balls, not cold ones. You see we had to conduct an experiment where a tubular cloth bag was tied around the rams balls at one end and a blow heater on the other. To top it all off was a thermometer firmly shoved up the rams arse. This scientific endeavour involved measuring the likely impact of temperature on a ram's fertility and on their ability to keep their body temperature low in summer heat. We also had a ruler to measure how well hung the rams were. Then we constructed a graph of our results.

The findings were that the better hung the rams were the better they were able to keep their body temperature at optimum conditions, and also the more likley the sperm count would be high.
So there you go guys. Stop measuring the length of your dick and start measuring how well hung you are. It may well be more important.