With the imminent approach of the new Transformers movie, Rise of the Beasts, promotion and marketing is in full swing!
Yours truly was lucky enough to get invited to help represent the Fandom on the opening night of the Transformers Beasts Base CampRoar & Snore Experience at Taronga Park Zoo. Along with a couple of other fans as well as celebrities and media, courtesy of Hasbro we were treated to a truly amazing night!
First off, you knew you were in the right place when there are two big fellas ready to greet you!
Big Angry Trev & Optimus Prime – I smell a spin-off coming!
We were given a guided tour by the keepers around some of the animal enclosures. It was interesting to see just how more active many of the animals are at dusk, it was the most animated I’ve ever seen koalas in my life! The zoo is very cool after opening hours.
They weren’t asleep!
We were subsequently ushered into an auditorium where we were given a special glimpse at some Rise of the Beasts material. A non-disclosure agreement prevents me discussing what we saw, but fans will be very happy indeed!
Surprises on the way!
After our secret viewing we were treated to some displays of the upcoming Rise of the Beasts action figures, due to hit shelves here in Australia on April 10th.
Sometimes it pays to be a superfan
Next a jaumty stroll to Beasts Base Camp – so cool! Everywhere you looked there was jungle-themed Transformer touches on show.
Into the main communial area we were ushered. Plenty of food and drink on offer as we lounged about on Transformers-themed cushions. Time for Big Angry Trev to go to work and shmooze with the other Aussie celebrities.
Miguel MaestreJordan Raskopoulos
As dark approached were escorted to our tents. Each tent was numbered and had its own Transformers theme. My tent-mate (Griffin of Ozformers) and I were in Tent 6 – The Mirage Tent. And talk about the views!
Inside on our beds, we found the very pleasant surprise of gift bags, containing all manner of Transformers merchandise – thanks Hasbro!
Freebies!
After another short tour we were given dinner, a delightful array of different traditional African foods. Then a special after-dark walk around some of the habitats.
No, not a satanic camel. At night the red light bothers the animals a lot less than white light
Next morning its more tours from the incredibly friendly keepers and then breakfast, followed by some up close and personal interactions with some of the animals. I must admit I absolutely ADORE giraffes, so getting to hand feed one was definitely a personal highlight and I was almost in tears, feeling so moved by the experience.
The event finished just as the zoo was opening up for the day, and what a fantastic fun experience it was overall! I’d like to thank Hasbro Australia once again for the opportunity, I can’t wait to bring my son to meet Prime & Primal! Don’t forget that the toys hit shelves on April 10th, and the Transformers: Rise of the Beasts movie will hit theatres on June 8th.
“Don’t mess with us – especially the little bloke below me, he’s angry!”
This is the tale of how a bad airline can really f*ck up a good holiday.
This is the 100% true and factual recount of how it took us 8 hours to get from home to our destination, yet FIFTY FOUR AND A HALF HOURS to get home. All with two small children in tow.
We were travelling from rural New South Wales to have a holiday with relatives in northern Queensland. This meant a 3 hour drive to the airport, catching a flight from Newcastle to Cairns, then being picked up by our relatives and driven the rest of the way.
Getting There
We were booked with Jetstar(never again!) for both there and back and booked well in advance. Firstly we had booked a flight that left at noon, then only a week out they cancelled the flight and rebooked us on one over 3 hours later. A pain but we could handle it, it just meant missing out on part of our first day of holidays. We drove to the airport, leaving the requisite time to check in and reach our gate. When getting close to the airport I kept getting alerts on my phone about the Gate being changed, which happened about 3 times.
When we got into the terminal, we saw our flight had been delayed by a solid 90 minutes, which meant we had to entertain our kids in the terminal for an extra hour and a half. Funny how they never sent a phone alert about that. Because we ended up flying out 4 ½ hours later than we had booked for, it meant our relatives had to pick us up after dark and we totally missed out on our first day of holidays.
Kids truding to their first of MANY delayed JetStar flights
Getting Back
Jetstar guarantee’s on their website that all children will be seated with their parents/adult relatives. I checked our seats online the night before we were due to fly out and surprise surprise, they had sat our 9 year old son and 7 year old daughter in individual seats by themselves in different parts of the plane, well away both from each other and my wife and I. Two hours of trying to sort it out online resulted in a “get to the airport early and have the staff there sort it out” reply from Jetstar – thanks so much., how very efficient and customer friendly of you.
(picture courtesy of Imagur)
So we arrive at the airport a solid two hours before we would have had to be there otherwise, and spend a stupid amount of time with the staff until they can ensure our kids are sitting with us. We then have a LOT of time to kill at the terminal.
Half an hour before we were due to fly out, they announce that – once again – our flight has been delayed by 90 minutes! So now we have even more time to kill, and have two very understandably grumpy kids.
Finally, after being at the airport for about four hours, we board the plane and take off from Cairns to Newcastle. Getting to the end of the flight, and I mean right at the end -they had announced our descent 10 minutes previously and the seatbelt sign was on – the captain comes on:
“Please be aware that we have received a storm warning and all flights to Sydney and Newcastle are being diverted to Brisbane”
The groan in the plane was audible, and much muttering and bad language ensued from the passengers. We could SEE the airport from out of the window, there was nary a cloud in the sky! There might be a storm on the way but it certainly wasn’t there yet! We had been less than 3 minutes from landing!
So the plane turns around and we have another hour of flight to reach Brisbane.
Son: ‘Will this flight ever end Dad?’ Me: ‘I don’t know son, I just don’t know’
We get off the plane. I’ve commented on how I’m more ‘Middle-aged Tired Trev’ than ‘Big Angry Trev’ these days, well, not by then. Anyone official not being immediately helpful was not abused, but certainly spoken to sharply in loud irritated tones. I didn’t go full Karen, but by Primus I wanted to.
My family finds some seats, and I get in the line for the desk that is arranging transport to hotels the airline has booked. I was in this line for ONE AND THREE-QUARTER HOURS! I have never been in a line that long in my life! By the time I reached the front I was ropeable! Thankfully my wife came up and did the talking to the girl behind the desk as I was standing back and audibly swearing. The girl told me not to abuse her to which I replied in an aggravated tone “I wasn’t swearing at you or about you or even looking at you so how about you just get on with it”. To be fair she was just doing her job, but she had a JetStar pin on her blazer which made her the enemy at this point. I did however stop swearing and just simmered in relative silence behind my wife.
A full hour after this they finally bus us to a hotel. We had left our resort at 7.30am, and it was now 8.30pm. 11 hours of travel and we hadn’t even managed to get out of the State! Our kids are tired and hungry, we are tired and hungry. My wife gets the kids in the shower and finds some children’s programming on the TV while I walk the streets of Brisbane trying to find a takeaway shop open.
“What the hell am I doing in Brisbane?!”
By the time we went to bed we had eaten nothing but Airport Terminal food and some pizza slices and potato cakes for dinner. We get a message from the airport that our replacement flight will be leaving at 2PM TOMORROW AFTERNOON.
The next day they bus picks us at noon and thankfully this flight was only running 15 minutes late this time. However when we get back to Newcastle and collect our car, we find out that the road we would have used to go home is washed out from the overnight storm. So instead of a 3 hour drive home, we drive 4 ½ hours to my mothers-in-law’s in Bathrust. We reach there exhausted at about 9.30pm that night. We are now 38 hours into our trip home and yet still hours away from our house.
We wake up the next morning, repack the car and prepare to head off. Only one problem, one MAJOR problem. The Bathurst 1000, one of the biggest car races in the country, had been on over the weekend, and now they were finished every man and his dog was heading home, with most of them towing caravans. One of the bridges that served as an exit point to the town was underwater from the storm, so everyone is trying to get out of Bathurst using the same route. The whole town is gridlocked! We kept checking the traffic app every 15 minutes, but it is still noon by the time it lets up enough we can get in the car and start our final leg.
The drive from our mothers-in-law’s to our place takes maybe 20 minutes longer than usual as another bridge in our little home town is washed out from the storm two nights ago, so we had to take a detour to get to our farm. By the time we drive in the front gate we had been travelling for 54 ½ hours! We were exhausted and beaten and after unpacking the car collapsed as a family on our couch.
Since then we have vowed to never fly JetStar again unless absolutely necessary. We are realists, we realise that sometimes flight delays are inevitable and things happen out of the airlines control. But from some rudimentary online searching subsequent to this trip, I’ve found Jetstar is notorious for late flights, more so than most other airlines. On multiple websites they rate only a 1 Star average from thousands of customer reviews.
It was bad enough that we missed the first day of our holiday because they cancelled our booked flight, then delayed our rebooked flight by 90 minutes. But if they had just left when they were supposed to on the flight home, all our troubles could have been avoided. If they had even just landed when they were supposed to (I swear you could see the people on the ground we were so far into our final approach) instead of turning around despite the storm still not having arrived, all our troubles could have been avoided. But because they were running late, and because they couldn’t be bothered landing a plane which was moments from touchdown, by the time we reached our State the storms had actually arrived and washed out the highways we would normally take to our home.
As far as I’m concerned, Jetstar can fornicate themselves vigorously with a pointed stick. No wonder in 2017 an international survey ranked Jetstar as the worlds worst airline. In my opinion a truly inept company on every level. It would give me great joy to hear some irate baggage handler rammed some lost luggage up their CEO’s arse.
Have you had a bad experience with Jetstar? Pop it in the comments below!
The pandemichas put a dampener on live music and theatre over the last few years, with the industry only now beginning to recover and live entertainment making its way onto our stages once again.
Thankfully, we’ve managed to get some of this entertainment out here in the countryside too. And thus this December we were treated to the Twin Town Players performance of ‘Murder at Aunt Agatha’s’.
Murder at Aunt Agatha’s is one of those classic who-dunnit plays, where all the characters are gathered in one house for the reading of a will. And in classic style, those characters keep getting murdered, both keeping the audience entertained and leading them to speculate on which character the murderer could be!
This production of Aunt Agatha starred many locals from the Rylstone and Kandos area, and was directed by the talented Ms. Cathy Heap. Spanning 4 days, the Rylstone Hall was packed with people eager to watch some live theatre once again. So lets work our way through the characters and the talented actors that brought them to life upon the stage.
The Earl Family
A comedic ‘nerd’ family, made up of a Mother (played by Rachelle Connellan), Father(Roger Heap – its rumoured that he got the role by sleeping with the director!),Daughter(Phillipa Kilminister) & Son (Ryan Gallaher). These characters are some of the few that have any brains in the play, though not a lot of common sense. The younger actors wore headsets in order to be heard by the audience and the family unit received lots of chuckles, before being unceremoniously killed en masse by poisoned ink.
The Vamvleet Family
Posh with a side of dark sheep. Mrs. Margaret Vanvleet(played by Leanne Bessant) and her daughter Alexandra (Kyrstal Thorn) are high society types that look down upon those around them, including their own relations. Leanne played a fantastic Margaret, a character prone to dramatically fainting, whilst Krystal shone as the petulant, spoiled Alexandra, always threatening to leave if it wasn’t for the money. Margaret’s other son, Reggie Vamvleet (Isabelle Furner/Big Angry Trev) is the black sheep of the family, fresh out of jail he turns up hoping for some inheritance money, spending his time either insulting everybody or sleazily flirting with some of the female characters. Isabelle played Reggie in a very ‘Fonzie’ style whereas the other actor, well… we will come to that later. Margaret meets her end via poisoned moonshine, Alexandra meets her end via a cliff and oddly Reggie is one of the few characters to survive.
The McSwine Family
Cousins, disturbing cousins…
Relatives of the snooty Vamvleets, these are the quintessential hillbillies which makes for a funny juxtaposition between the two family branches, played out over several scenes. The mother Mrs.Katie Mae McSwine(played by Owain James) and her three daughters(Emily Gallaher, Jess Gallaher & Janine Maw) are all extremely funny on stage and tick all the stereotype hillbilly boxes such as loving Elvis, drinking moonshine, winning spitting contests and, most disturbingly, having a crush on their cousin. And with the experienced thespian Owain dressed as the matriarch, that old tradition of men dressing up as women on stage was kept alive. The three daughters, all of whom were involved with the KHS production of Pricilla earlier in the year, came across very relaxed on stage and maintained character extremely well – it will be interesting to see their progression as actors in future theatricals.
The Movie Star & her Agent
Sounds like something out of Gilligan’s Island, but no. Gina Starlet (Mary Boxsell) and her long-suffering agent Maxie(Anne Attwood) have shown up looking for a share in the inheritance. Mary plays the faded-starlet character beautifully, and she and Anne share the most dramatic death scene in the entire play. The two of them choking to death earned a huge roar of approval and round of applause on the third night of the play, their dramatics delighting the appreciative crowd!
The Evil Siblings
The dastarly domestic staff in the front row
Bridgett(played by Kirilee Besant) and Hildegard(Ryan Attwood) were in the service of Aunt Agatha and are now hoping to scare off all the relatives so that they can get the cash for themselves. These are some of the more in-depth characters portrayed in the show – they are siblings but are pretending to be twin sisters rather than brother & sister, despite the fact that Bridgett talks with a French accent and her ‘sister’ talks with a German one. Part of the humour is that Hildegard really does look like a man in a dress, and for most of the play he seems the most obvious suspect to be the murderer. Ryan did a very funny and over-the-top rendition of Hildegard, and boy can that boy scream! Kirilee was fantastic as Bridgett, and would often improvise stage movements, like roughly shoving away the lecherous Reggie at random times, or fixing the blankets on the couch playing to the French Maid theme of her character.
The Lawyer, Aunt Agatha, Police & Prompter
Taking on multiple roles can be tough, but Chantelle Williams did it seamlessly. Chantelle provided the voice for Aunt Agatha’s recordings, as well as coming on in the last scene to arrest the murderer. Perhaps even more importantly, she was the prompter on side of stage, providing much needed help whenever anyone would forget a line. Full credit should also be given to Willow Connellan who was a dynamo backstage as well!
Willima Cleanyou, played by Belinda Innes, is Aunt Agatha’s laywer and is a very strong and stern character, showing the most authority in the play before the Detective enters. Belinda’s performance of this embezzling lawyer was flawless, never missing a beat!
The Leading Man & Lady
Two of the stand-out performances of the show were by Emily Gardiner, playing Rose Bloom, and actor of stage & screen Blake Prosser, playing Detective Sam Club. Rose is an overtly sweet character who is not all she appears, hiding the deviousness within, and managing to initially charm Sam. Sam himself is a hard-talking, no-nonsense gumshoe who turns up just before the end of Act 1, and his striving to find the killer is one of the main plot motivators for the second half of the show. Rose likes everyone whereas Sam suspects everyone, so naturally these two disparate characters develop an attraction for each other, even if it is short lived. Like Bridgett & Hildegard, these are two characters that are more fleshed out than most of the others, giving the actors a chance to display a range of emotions rather than simply playing a one-dimensional role, and both Emily and Blake were up to the task, delighting audiences with their performances night after night.
The Ghosts
5 local children – Allison George, Ellaria Jonkers, Ashton Thorn, India Jonkers & Ryder Robinson – played the Ghosts of Aunt Agatha, interjecting some welcome cuteness into a play that is otherwise all about murder and self-interested characters. The ghosts come on stage twice during the production, and the audience loved it every time!
And, er, the other guy…
If you don’t know the lines, just move around a lot
Yes dear readers, Big Angry Trev did strut the stage again, and strut is probably the best way to describe it – what I lacked in script-knowledge I made up in swagger.
Unfortunately the actor playing Reggie was sick for 3 of the 4 shows so I had to step in at the last minute and play the role. And it was very last minute – I didn’t meet the cast until an hour before showtime, didn’t get a chance for a single run through and said the lines out loud for the first time during the opening show! Despite having script in hand I still forgot a lot of lines and a lot of cues, so thankfully the rest of the cast were good at subtly prompting me or prodding me in the right direction.
It t’wernt me gov!
Reggie is a sod of a character, which made him a lot of fun to play! That said, all the horrible insulting things I had to say to Krystal, Emily, Jess & Janine, as well as the sleazy pick-up lines I had to use on Kirilee & Emily, made me cringe a little inside at times. But I found that there was a certain liberation with having been to no rehearsals – no one could get mad at me for missing cues and lines because I was stepping in last second, and I could pretty make up what the character Reggie was like as I went along – by the 3rd show I was swaggering around the stage, walking almost crotch-first, busting out insults and pervy comments right, left & centre. All in for some reason a slightly cockney accent. It was great fun! Full cred to the girls for getting their revenge though, Kirilee’s character was shoving mine a lot more than the script called for. And the cousins Emily, Jess & Janine enjoyed tormenting me/my character with overly-theatrical sniffing and plucking of head hairs – it was all I could do to not to burst out laughing on stage!
Part of the joy of community theatre is that it really is made up of members of the local community. This means instead of a bunch of egotistic actors all coming together in order to practice their art and further their careers, it’s regular folk from the local towns who have decided to put on a fun show. Murder at Aunt Agatha’s cast and crew were made up of husbands & wives, mothers & offspring and even 3 siblings from the one family! It also put everyone on a level playing field, there were 6 students and 3 staff from the local High School and it was pleasant to see how these teens and adults interacted with each other as peers, any pre-existing power dynamics from school now non-existent.
This all made for a warm and convivial atmosphere and this came out backstage, on stage and with the casts interactions with the audience, which every night consisted of a sea of smiles.
Full credit to the cast and crew for putting on a fantastic show! I heartily look forward to watching the next production by the Twin Town Players. And who knows, maybe they’ll need another sleazy cockney guy to show up at the last second again to join in with the fun!
Bad neighbours can make life hell, especially if you just want to be left alone and mind your own business. Some people seem incapable of not bothering their neighbours though and I’ve had quite a few over of this sort over the years, perhaps in part because I used to live in the crappy parts of suburbs because the rent would be cheaper.
“Please Karen, I’m sorry I used my mower on my own lawn, don’t have me arrested again!”
So here are Big Angry Trev’s Top 10 Encounters with Bad Neighbours:
*Bad Neighbour #1: Parking-Spot Parionia Karen
Reservoir Victoria, Australia, 1996.
Was living in a block of 5 units in Reservoir. We were probably the bad neighbours to most other residents because it was during my Uni days and used to throw lots of parties. The cops would usually show up and ask us to keep the noise down. We would apologise and immediately do so, but it must have irked the neighbours that this would happen about 8 times a year.
One morning I’m in the shower. My girlfriend who had stayed the night came in to tell me the lady in Unit 5 (we were in 3) had just come to the door and told me to stop the harassment or she would call the police. I had never even said hello to this woman so had no idea what she was on about.
Went and knocked on the ladies door to find out what it was all about. She accused me of parking my car out the front of her place and revving the engine a lot (never happened) to harass her. She then went on about how I shouldn’t judge her just because she’s a single mother (I would have been 19, she looked early 20’s), making it sound like I had already decided she must be a slut or something.
I informed her that I had never revved my car in front of her unit, the most I had ever done was pull up in front so I then reverse in to my allotted spot. Told her that I had never judged her because I knew absolutely nothing about her and that for all I knew she lived with four big guys that would beat me up for even looking at her sideways.
My mother came to visit me a few months later. She asked where she could park and I told her the end spot because no cars ever parked there. My mother did so and within minutes this mad woman was at my door demanding we move the car. As I went to do so the irritation on my face must have been evident as when I passed her she stared to Karen-likeblather on about her rights. I snapped at her ‘why don’t you just move then?’ and then continued to shift my mother’s vehicle. She left us alone after that but we never dared use her parking spot again, which remained completely vacant until we moved ourselves a few years later.
*Bad Neighbour #2: Toothless Nutcase fakes visit by Prostitute
Reservoir Victoria, Australia, 2000
Second place in Reservoir and had moved in with my now-fiancé. Two units this time, with ours being the one closest to the street. The unit at the back had a husband, wife and wife’s father living in it. Had never spoken to either of the men and to her only a couple of times. She was missing most of her teeth, wore these awful singlets all the time that barely covered her unfortunate physique, and would be constantly hosing down their half of the driveway. Like, constantly – maybe for a couple of hours each day!
I went away for a weekend to visit friends out of town and that evening my fiancé rings me up screaming. Apparently the neighbour woman had come over and given her some story about a blond in an SUV showing up and when I wasn’t home had knocked on her door. This supposed blond was asking where I was and then had left a magazine with the neighbour to pass onto me. The magazine was like the Prostitute Quarterly for Melbourne or something – all articles about the sex trade in Melbourne and lots of ads for brothels. One of these brothel ads had all these different messages to me written around it, things like ‘We love your Goatee’, ‘Come back soonTrevor!’ etc, making it seem like I was a prolific and favoured customer.
Took ages to calm my fiancé down over the phone to get her to look at the facts:
A: If I actually had visited a brothel (which I hadn’t), what kind of brothel would be randomly sending out prostitutes from their business to visit their clients homes uninvited? Was this meant to be some kind of after-sales service? And when people visit a brothel, are they required to give their home address? I’m guessing not.
B: If for some unfathomable reason, when you visited a brothel and for whatever purpose gave them your home address, it was unlikely they would send prostitutes then knocking on neighbours doors and asking to leave incriminating evidence.
It all made zero sense except for someone going out of their way to punk me and I finally got my fiancé to see that. When I confronted the neighbour about it she told me the same story she told my fiancé; a blond in an SUV had turned up looking for me and gave my neighbour the magazine. Then she proceeded to tell me that I shouldn’t be getting married if I was doing that kind of thing. So obviously her intention had been to break up the couple next door, but for what reason I never found out.
A few months later they broke in through our backdoor and stole our TV, I found it pawned at a local Cash Converters.
*Bad Neighbour #3: The Drunken Dog-Beater
Werribee Victoria, Australia, 2001
For a short time I rented a house in Werribee. Not long after moving in a drunk neighbour in his 40’s knocked on the door and asked could I please give him a lift as he really needed to get into town. I was sceptical but obliged, part of the reason being I was only 23 and he was much older than me – I hadn’t gotten a handle of saying no to people my senior as yet. Drove him into town and he insisted on giving me a pack of cigarettes as a thank you.
After that at least twice a week he would show up tipsy on our doorstep asking my partner where I was. She would always lie and say I was out (I was usually tinkering in the shed) and he would protest that I wasn’t because he could see my car there. Guy was obviously in need of a friend but I had no interest in being it.
He had 3 big dogs that would howl all the time, pretty certain he was beating them from the way he would be yelling and the anguished noises they would make. Rang the RSPCA about it and they said there was nothing they could do – was pretty surprised and annoyed by that.
*Bad Neighbour/hood #4: Crime Everywhere!
Broadmeadows Victoria, Australia, 2003
Was living in a block of a dozen units in the cheapest part of the suburb. Don’t know how much of it had to do with my neighbours but I got burgled within a month of moving in, then 6 months later came home to find a stolen car in my parking spot with its inside completely stripped.
Bad Neighbour/Housemates #5: The Dodgy Nurses
Cricklewood London, England, 2004
Lived in a slim, 3-story share house in Cricklewood, London. The two girls that ran the share-house, both nurses, were very dodgy – they waited until we gave our deposit before telling us that if we didn’t find someone to replace us when we decided to move out that they would keep our deposit. They would never give us a receipt for any of the rent we paid so we were pretty sure they were overcharging everyone in the house so that they themselves could live there for free. My girlfriend had small items of jewellery go missing as well so we had to start locking our bedroom door.
We were on the top floor and there was another Aussie that had his bedroom across the hall from ours. He would play the same Dire Straights CD over and over again everysinglenight. You’d just be starting to relax when you’d hear “We gotta move these refrigerators” come blasting out of his room. Idiot used to sit up there drinking beer all night every night listening to the same songs, the cops even turned up once because he was throwing his beer bottles out the window onto the busy street below.
After a month we couldn’t take living there anymore so found someone to take our room and got them to give their deposit straight to us. The nurses were livid, it was obvious they had intended to keep our deposit as well as get the deposit off the next guy. We ended up moving a week early just to get out of there.
*Bad Neighbour #6: Stalked for Sex
Grays Essex, England, 2004
Pushy gay guy that lived across the road stalked me for sex. Full story here.
Neighbour had a cat who he never bothered to feed or look after so I ended up feeding it. He kept it locked outside 24/7 and I would come home to find this cat waiting at my back door crying for a pat and some food. Neighbour saw me putting out a bowl of water for his cat once on a really hot day but said nothing so it was an indication he was probably happy someone else was looking after his animal, saving him the trouble. When I moved out I left a note tacked to the inside of one of the cupboards for the new tenants to find, telling them about the cat and suggesting they may want to pick up where I left off.
Had a break-in there, but my housemate was home so the guy got scared off.
*Bad Neighbour/hood #8: Pigeon Lady
Northcote Victoria, Australia, 2009
The lady living to our right was quite nice, but had big bird boxes full of dozens of pigeons right up against our fence, which irked my wife as she hated pigeons. The thing that used to really annoy us though was she would throw tons of white bread scraps over the fence to our dog, despite being asked several times not to because they were bad for our dogs digestion.
One day came home to find the kid over our back fence was throwing rocks over the fence at the clean washing on our line. Got robbed twice while we lived there, once they stole my laptop, the other time they stole our digital camera which still had all the photo’s from my 30th birthday party on it, so I don’t have a single photo from that night.
*Bad Neighbour/hood #9: Our Nature Strip is his Toilet
Swan Hill Victoria, Australia, 2011
In the small town of Swan Hill in Victoria we had neighbours a few doors down that would have a party every Friday night and be blasting really bad country music in their backyard. Then one night while I was away supervising a camp, two drunk guys decided that one of them couldn’t make it home to use the toilet in time, discussed the issue and decided to take a dump on our nature strip at 3am, my poor wife having to listen to the whole performance in the middle of the night alone in the house.
*Bad Neighbour #10: The Grape-Guns of Wrath
Murrawee Victoria, Australia, 2015
Living on a farm you think you would be safe from bad neighbours but we got one when we bought our first property. Things were OK for the first couple of years, then the neighbours decided they were going to grow grapes. So they got three of these huge scare guns that went off on timers to blast every few minutes to scare the birds off. Problem was that they were so loud you could hear them in our house like they were only a meter away! I looked up the rules regarding scare guns in rural areas and you were only allowed to have one blast every 15 minutes and only between the hours of 7am and 6pm. He had 3 guns on 10 minute timers so there was a blast every 3 minutes or so and would go from 6.55am to 8pm every day. It was like we were living in a warzone and it made life hell, as well as disturbing the sleep of our infant daughter and toddler son.
I finally had enough and went over to complain. When I arrived I found he had put one of the scare guns as close to our property line as was physically possible. When he and I began to argue about it I said to him in a reasonable tone “Look, come over and have a cup of tea and you’ll hear what it sounds like in our kitchen”. That chilled him out a bit and made him more reasonable, but the guns never fully stopped during grape-growing season and we were relieved when we moved away 2 years later.
Thankfully my family and I live in an even more remote part of the country now, where we can only see our neighbours by standing on the veranda and looking into the distance. Lets hope our relatively peaceful existence continues.
Got a bad neighbour story? Pop it in the comments section below!
Everyone’s favourite DJ, Big DJ Trev, of local station KRR.fmwill be putting in a live appearance at this year’s Rylstone Street Feast on November 5th! This will be the first time the event has been held since the start of the Pandemicso looking forward to some great tucker!
The most popular DJ on radio (that appears on KRR.fm between the hours of 6 & 9pm on Thursdays).
Video certainly didn’t kill this radio star! Big DJ Trev will be on site between 10am & 5pm, and will graciously pose for selfies and sign autographs. Phone answering messages recorded upon request (payments accepted in either cash or beer). If he is eating however do NOT disturb him – it is not wise to get between a man and his meat because losing a finger often offends.
So come on down and meet Big DJ Trev, it’ll be something to tell your grandchildren!
Given the ‘slap that was heard around the world’ at the Oscars this week, where Comedian Chris Rock was slapped by Scientologist Will Smith for making a joke at his wife’s expense, it reminded me of my worst ever stand-up gig where we also had an angry punter storm the stage due to an offended wife.
Circa 1998 or 1999 (can’t remember which) I get employed to do stand-up at the Ballarat Bikers Association Dinner. $400 for a couple of hours work was a lot of money to a Drama Student & Aspiring Actor who was living on the pittance that was Austudy. Because I was so young I was still relatively inexperienced doing Stand-Up in front of larger crowds, so employed a musician acquaintance of mine to play some songs between my sets. I looked at my existing material and tried to roughen it up as best I could, thinking that a room full of Bikers are going to expect lots of dirty jokes and swearing.
We pack up the 82’ Gemini with music equipment and some basic costume changes for me (I used to do a few characters back then) and drive the 90 minutes to the gig. Walk into the venue feeling relatively confident…
…. and stop.
Everything from the get-go was wrong. Everything. The guy that booked me obviously didn’t have a friggin clue what he was doing!
First off the venue was not set up for stand up comedy. It was a long narrow hall with two rows of long tables and chairs going along its length and a small stage at one end. This meant that no one was actually facing the stage, they all were facing each other in the direction of either the centre of the room or conversely the side walls. No one wants to crane their neck to the side for half an hour at a time even for the best comedian, let alone an unknown like me. And even if you had punters that were willing to do so, it would mean they would be further blocking the view of the people behind them. This was a room designed for dining, not watching.
Secondly the average age of the Bikers was deceased. These were all bikers who were likely there when the first ever motorcycle rolled off the assembly line. And they all had their wives with them! The sketches I had written were to amuse big-bellied, bigger-bearded bikers who would likely eat a beer bottle after drinking its contents, not octogenarian ladies who had given up an evening of watching reruns of A Country Practice to come out for a meal.
I hastily rewrite everything in my head. Grab a couple of my character scripts and start frantically crossing out expletives and sex jokes. I then take the stage…
… nobody cared! Nobody listened. A few heads briefly looked up, clocked me as someone a quarter their age and therefore easily dismissed, then looked down again. Everyone is busy eating their first course and even with a mic you can barely hear me over the sound of cutlery on plates and old duffers telling each other stories about their corns & bunions. I’d be willing to bet 90% of the crowd never even realized I took the stage.
How I must have appeared to the crowd through their cataracts – a blurry guy on the stage hopeful that someone cares
I finish my first set to nary a single applaud and dismount the stage. The musician I hired mounts the stage to play a few filler songs so I can get changed into a character costume, even though at this point it seems like it will be a wasted effort. And then…
… everything goes really wrong.
To this day I don’t know how the musician could have been so stupid. You learn early on in showbusiness to read a crowd and this was a crowd of old people only interested in having a meal and catching up with their friends, they were not interested in entertainment, unless it was someone like Slim Dusty. I already had it in my head to simply plough through, collect the cash and get out of there, writing the evening off as a learning experience. This idiot however had decided he was going to get the crowds attention no matter what, so starts playing his guitar really loudly and not singing but yelling into the mic.
Just as I was about to signal him to tone it down and simply play some instrumental for people to listen to while they talk, the fool says into the mic “Why aren’t you f*ckers listening?! Do I need to start having a wank up here or something?!”.
Now the audience is paying attention. And they are not happy. This moron is treating the night like he’s performing in front of a Uni pub crowd, not a bunch of senior citizens. He continues to carry on until a big old fella storms up on stage and angrily rips the power cord out of the speakers, glares at all of us and stomps off. Meanwhile another old bloke is yelling at us for swearing in front of his wife. I try to placate him with apologies as best I can while angry stares from around the room laminate me to the back wall.
Needless to say we did not go up on stage again. Somehow I still managed to get the money for the gig from the suitably embarrassed looking guy who booked me, then we load up the car for the drive back to Melbourne. The idiot musician is crapping on in the car about artistic integrity and what was he supposed to do – I just hand him his $50 cut and tell him to shut up. The remainder of the drive is done in silence.
So yeah, I didn’t get slapped like Chris Rock but we certainly offended a few patron’s wives and there was a sense of anger & potential violence in the air. I suppose I can take solace in the fact none of them will still be coming for me 24 years later, for if any of them haven’t yet passed on their bones would by now be too brittle to even lift a cup of tea, let alone gather up pitchforks and flaming torches.
The two morals of the story?
If on stage read the crowd, get a sense of what will fly and what wont. Be prepared for angry husbands if thinking of saying something that may offend somebody’s wife.
If you are in the crowd, appreciate the fact the comedian got hired to do a specific job – amuse & entertain – if you don’t like it then maybe blame the people who employed them to do that job, rather than going up like a self-important idiot and slapping someone.
Well Scott, it’s not as glamorous as you might think, nor as easy. One does not simply show up to the station with a box of CD’s and a laptop of downloaded songs ready to go. It takes a lot of work and preparation throughout the day to get ready for that evening’s performance.
To answer your question best, let me take you through a typical day leading up to that night’s broadcast of The Big DJ Trev Show:
6 to 9 Thursdays on KRRfm
7am – Wake up. Groan. Scratch. Roll over. Go back to sleep.
9am – Wake up. Groan. Scratch. Get up. Brought Irish Coffee by butler.
9.30am – Breakfast: Bacon, Eggs, Sausages, Black Pudding, Hash Brown, Mushrooms, Toast, more Coffee. Tell butler to give the groupies in my bed cab fare and send them on their way.
10am – Go to toilet. Read papers to check for interesting news stories to discuss on tonight’s show.
10.30am – Reflect upon how I am so much more knowledgeable and such a superior writer to every journalist in every newspaper everywhere. Finish going to toilet.
11am – Personal Assistant opens and reads out my fan mail. For those who have sent cash/Transformers/nude photos tell assistant to send them 8×10 glossies and autograph them on my behalf.
12pm – Limo arrives to take me for working lunch with Agent at All-you-can-eat BBQ Rib Joint. Half- listen to latest round of offers of movie roles, television spots, celebrity appearances and book deals. Endure constant flirtations from busty 19-yo waitress as she brings plate after plate of ribs.
12.30pm – Hit Agent over head with whiskey bottle when suggestion made of doing a Reality TV Show with Sophie Monk. Agent grovels and apologizes profusely. Get fellated by waitress.
2pm – Ribbon Cutting at new Hospital Wing in my name. Inform Agent (still bleeding) to keep all sick people at least 20 feet from my position or else its Whiskey Bottle Time again – Agent rushes off to inform bodyguards. Plaster smile on my face as photographs taken, hands shook and fans scream my name.
‘Can I go anywhere without fans adoring me? I’m entitled to a private life too dammit!’
4pm – Meet with personal trainer. Told yet again should not be smoking and drinking on treadmill. Tell trainer yet again to go fornicate himself and throw beer bottle at him. Personal Trainer apologises and goes to find bandages.
5pm – Dinner: 1.2kg Tomahawk Steak with garlic mushroom sauce, sides of mash potatoes and roasted corn on the cob. Pedicure whilst eating and assistant reads through celebrity guest list for tonight’s show.
5.30pm – Chopper ride to Radio Station. Fussed over by the ladies from wardrobe, hair and makeup.
‘How do you get to work – a car? Pfff… peasants’
5.57pm -Moment of crippling self-doubt in dressing room, knowing that I’m a sham who makes his fortune off playing the music of real artists.
5.58pm – Shot of the brown stuff, snort of the white stuff.
And NOW we are ready to rock!
5.59pm – Walk through station to Broadcast Booth. Clapping from all sides whilst bodyguards clear a path.
6pm – Showtime!
I hope this answers your question Scott, and that you enjoyed a sneak peak behind the scenes of what hard-working prep I go to each week to bring you the sparkling entertainment you have all come to expect and enjoy. And remember folks, you can listen to The Big DJ Trev Show every Thursday night from 6 to 9pm on KRR.fm.
Many, many years ago I was trying my hand at stand-up comedy. Though I had always found it easy to be the funniest guy in the room, I often had trouble transferring that skill to behind the mic.
In the late 90’s I tried a skit out – ‘Big Angry Trev the Feminist’. In it I would berate the men in the audience at length in satirical ways, one of which was to physically attack them. For this I used Toby.
BEHOLD MY MAGESTY!
Toby, procured at a sex shop for about sixty bucks, was a 1 foot long, huge rubber cock. Where the name Toby came from I can’t remember, but I called it that once and the name stuck. In my skit I would run out into the audience and hit men over the head with Toby, yelling random arguments about how men in society are always metaphorically beating women over the head with their phallus’s at any given moment, so now it was their turn.
Some comedians had advanced animatronic puppets -my budget was much lower
The humour was supposed to work via the men nervously laughing or getting embarrassed by my actions, which would then lead me into more tirades while the rest of the audience would laugh at my victim’s obvious discomfort. It didn’t work. I was playing to Uni crowds after all, and more often than not the guys I would attack Toby with would take Toby out of my hands with zero discomfort and pretend to fellate him (note by now Toby had become a ‘him’ rather than an ‘it’). Between this and actual feminists in the audience being somewhat unimpressed by my portrayal of being one of their number, the act soon died and Toby was retired from showbiz after only half a dozen outings.
No autographs!
Retired from Showbiz? Yes. Retired from life? Absolutely not! Toby had become something of a mascot of the household and, given my propensity to constantly have mates over as well as throw a big party every few months, Toby gained something of a cult following amongst my frequent visitors.
Toby also came to live in the fridge, my thinking being that ‘who wants a big sweaty cock sitting around in the heat?’. It was amazing just how many housemates over the years were perfectly fine with this! So, unless busy with his social obligations entertaining guests, Toby always had a prime position on the top shelf of the fridge, which he inhabited for well over a decade. This went on for so many years across so many share-houses that it became normalized practice. If someone new to the social group expressed surprise or puzzlement about there being a giant rubber cock in the fridge, they would be treated by others with bemusement. ‘That’s Toby’ they would be informed matter-of-factly, as if it was perfectly natural for a foot-long rubber dick to live in the fridge next to the cheese and margarine.
Rug up Toby – its a bit chilly, you wouldn’t want shrinkage now would you?
In 2003 I travelled overseas to do Stand Up Comedy and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland – a dream come true! As I was staying on to backpack around Europe for an extra year after the festival concluded, all my worldly possessions here in Australia went into storage. But a couple of friends volunteered to babysit Toby while I was away. Toby enjoyed his time there, especially when they started making little costumes for him to wear and photoshopped albums of him!
Sadly Toby has since met his end. When my fiancé and I got pets circa 2008, poor Toby was no longer the cute baby of the household and was carried around and coddled much less, though still got a bit of attention.
Napping with our cat on the couch.
When we had children of our own several years later I didn’t think appropriate to store Toby in the fridge next to our infants milk bottles, so he lost his longtime home and got stored in the farm shed instead. A year after that when I randomly unearthed him, rats had obviously been at him and the rubber was gnawed in a dozen places up and down his shaft (ouch!). Thus, after 15 years, Toby was put to his final rest.
“Goodbye my beloved child, I shall weep for thee”
But the legend of Toby lives on! And it would be nice to think that there is, like his original purpose called for, a bit of Toby deep up inside each and every one of us.
Got something to say about this post? Or perhaps you are a friend of Toby’s from the old days? Pop it in the comments section below!
Books are awesome! Nothing better than a good book!
I’ve always loved reading, as has my wife. We’ve been reading to our kids every day, as well as before bed, since they were born so they have developed a love of reading too. Our son has reached the age that he now reads to himself after we say goodnight and during the lockdownwe let him stay up late in bed to read his favourite books.
Our daughter however still much prefers to be read to than read herself, though her skills improve every day. Like all kids she’s got some particular favourites that she wants to have read to her again and again…
…and again.
I never thought I could get sick of Cat in the Hat but damn I’d like to grab that hat, pull it all the way down to his feet and then toss that trouble-making feline in a river! Our daughter loves books under the Dr. Seuss banner and night after night we work our way through her extensive library of them. Books beloved from my childhood have now become a chore to read, yet none so more than friggin Go, Dog. Go!
What a fucking pain in the arse this book is! Written by P.D Eastman under the Seuss banner it follows Dogs… er… doing things. Sitting on a house. Sitting under a house. Dogs going in. Dogs going out. You get the picture. And whilst I can appreciate that the book is good for beginning readers to read themselves, its gruelling to get through as an adult when you are reading it to your kid for the 50th time in a row.
And no one is more of a pain in the arse in the book than this fucking bird:
Annoying entitled little green bastard!
Let me set the scene. A bunch of dog are, naturally, driving their cars:
Hey dogs? Ever hear of leaving two car spaces between you and the car in front?
The dogs are approaching an intersection, going hell for leather. There isn’t a single other car on the road. There is however a prick of a bird walking down the center of the road for some damn reason instead of using the footpath:
Get off the fucking road!
Now the bird sets off the traffic light and stands there in the middle of the damn intersection, yelling at the dogs to stop! Nearly causes a multi-vehicle pile up in doing so! The sense of entitlement in this action is Karen-worthy!:
Surely this is an arrest-able offense?
Then the little fucking bastard, after causing all this hassle, walks off down the road, giving permission to the dogs to go again. Look at the expression on those dogs! You can tell they want to jump out of their cars and maul the bird to death and I wouldn’t blame them:
Oh you little turd you!
Not only should this bird not be walking down the middle of a road meant for cars, let alone standing in the middle of an intersection yelling instructions at the motorists, but why the fuck doesn’t he just fly?! He’s a goddamn bird!
I swear, if ever they invent a way for people to enter books I wont be going into a Harry Potter novel to do a ‘Voldermort’s got no nose, how does he smell?’ joke at the evil one, no. I’ll go into Go, Dog. Go! and wring that birds scrawny neck.
‘You’re a busy man.How do you make that work without either having a clone to help you out or somehow create a 36 hour day?’.
Well Michael it’s true, I am a very busy man. Between this blog, my radio show, working full time, performing househusband duties, managing my giant Transformer collection and building furniture for their shed, as well as hobby farming where I raise goats as well as ducks and chickens, boredom is something that receded from my life many years ago. Add on top of that the most time-intensive activity of all – being a father of two young children – and spare time in non-existent.
The many faces of Trev
First off – I will never clone myself. Never! Do you know how big my ego is? How much attention seeking behaviour I indulge in? I don’t need another one of me running around telling my jokes, eating my meat and vying for all the attention that should rightly be mine!
And now there’s more of me… him… us
Also I’m married. What if my wife can’t tell me from the clone? I don’t need no stinkin clone getting busy with my missus! Plus, Primus forbid, what if it turns out by some quirk of the cloning process that he is better in bed than me?! I don’t think my ego, large as it is, could take the hit of my wife saying ‘last night was the best sex we’ve ever had Trev!’ and I hadn’t even been at home!
As for 36 hour days, well manipulating the time stream to that extent is beyond even my capabilities. Sure I could take my family to Mars where the days are at least 25 hours long – I could get a lot done in that extra hour – but it seems like a hassle. It was hard enough moving my Transformer collection from one state to another without taking it to a whole other planet!
So how do I manage my busy lifestyle?
Well there are several things I do – some are time management and some are just sacrifice.
*Giving up hobbies: I have way too many hobbies. Like way too many. So some have had to be toned down and others sacrificed completely. This blog for example, has gone from an entry each week to about two a month. I’ve given up video gaming, though to be honest I think the gamer in me had run its course anyway. I used to brew my own beer and had to give that up. And I don’t farm as many fruit & vegetables as I used to, though still enough that each week we eat at least one or two things that come from the garden. I’m also a bit of a bibliophile, but reading a book for my own pleasure has been relegated to the odd 5 minutes in bed before blissful slumber.
For a while juggling being a gamer and father was so easy!
*Multitasking: Except at work where it is a requirement, I don’t schedule. Don’t believe in it. What I do do is do multiple jobs in the same room at the same time. So for example when I’m in the kitchen (with quasi-laundry attached) I might be wiping benches, preparing meals, stacking the dishwasher, loading the washing machine and unloading the dryer all at the same time (well not literally – thanks to the failure of mutation science I only have two hands).Then the same goes for other rooms and even parts of the farm – nothing like chasing off some feral goatsin the ute while you are on your way to go cut firewood in the back paddock.
Sigh… I remember when multitasking meant drinking and rocking out at the same time.
*Be Married: Dear sweet Primus let nothing ever happen to my wife! Not only because she is the love of my life, but also because she does so many chores to manage the house & kids and our lives in general. Chances are if she disappeared from our lives my children and I would be huddled round a fire in tattered clothing, eating beans from a can and hoping it would rain soon so we could wash ourselves. Our existence would be akin to those survivors of a zombie apocalypse.
Make sure you treat your wife right – romance is a lot easier than being a single parent!
*Child Labour: Those damn kids can work for their food! OK, so maybe I don’t actually deny them sustenance and or send them down mineshafts to search for coal. But at 6 & 8 years old respectively they are at the age they can chip in with the chores. Every day after school, before they are allowed to go play with toys or video games, they need to help unstack the dishwasher, unpack their school bags, put all their breakfast and lunch dishes in the sink and most importantly go feed all the animals. Not only does it teach them responsibility, but it means they are spending time with their pets. How kids can ignore a real-life dog but spend hours training a dog to obey in Minecraft is beyond me.
Wish all my chores were this cute when I was young
Of course the children love to be involved with all the constant projects going on around the farm and house too. They help plant and pick all the vegetables, which not only helps me out but makes them more inclined to eat what we grow when it come to fruition. My son loves to help out with my construction projects and is currently helping me build a display table for the Transformers shed, and my daughter loves to bake with her mother and make muffins for their school lunches.
Dig boy! Dig!
*And lastly, what I do most, is go, go, go! All day, every day. Sigh… Every. Damn. Day. I would be lying if there wasn’t part of me that would like to spend a day just lounging on the couch, eating potato chips and rewatching Deadpool movies. But if I wanted that I shouldn’t have had kids and chosen to live on a farm. Life is so rewarding, and so very, very tiring.
Sometimes I fake back injuries just so I can lie down in the emergency room for an hour and rest
So that’s what I do Michael, that’s how Big Angry Trev manages his life. And maybe I have kind of inwardly cloned myself in this one body. There is Big Angry Trev the blogger, Big Farmer Trev the hobby farmer, Big DJ Trev the radio host. And most importantly (Big) Dad (Trev) the father. Big Gamer Trev is dead and buried but I hope to resurrect Big Brewer Trev at some point and start making my own beer again. But then that begs the question – would I ever have the time to drink it?
Thank you for your question.
Got any other ‘Ask Trev’ questions?Pop them in the comments section below!
