The Far Side

Ha, have a look at todays farside calender gag. This is one of my favourite ones.

The Black Velvet Band Press Release

Well, we bribed enough people to get an ad in the Irish Scene (monthly magazine for all things celtic and Irishy in Perth). We are going to ramp up the giggery this year, we have 4 gigs on paddies day this year (3 hour gigs each) and quite a bit going on with the classical stuff too. The other day I even bought a new set of strings!

We do a 2 piece, a 3 piece and a 4 piece with a bass player (we like to shuffle them around) and are pretty flexible doing averyting from country to folk.

On the 17th of march, it will have been a year since our first gig. The last year for the band has been great. We own our own equipment, and Adam keeps bringing a few new songs to each gig so it keeps it interesting for us.

Here's to another year of making noises in bars and getting free beers AND getting paid to do it!

Blinging New Kitchen Appliances

Yes, we are splashing out. A great big new fridge and a dishwasher (worth its weight in gold as far as I'm concerned). We are gonna pick up the dishwasher some time this week and the fridge in a few weeks time. We have a lot of parties in our place so have a pretty regular and constant supply of dirty dishes, not for much longer!

The End Of An Era

It was in the examiner a few days ago (thanks Owen for the heads up) that Matties has closed. What a place and what a charachter.

Mattie was an incredible guy, in an age of political correctness, Mattie Kiely was all too happy to taunt and jibe his customers. I remember how he always laughed when a naive buck came in asking for curry sauce or if its someones first time in the door and they order something other than a burger or chips, say chicken burger only to be told that if they wanted that sort of luxury, perhaps they'd be better off at the Victoria Hotel! Classic lines. Someone asked him for mayonaisse once on their chips. Mattie went to town on the guy, practically called him a homosexual.....the whole place was in uproar laughing at the poor guy. Hilarious!

It was near the bus so it was ideal to pop in on the way home. He's some man for the faces he'd know you straight off, your regular order and your life story with it. Last time I was in there he insisted on giving me a straw with my coke cos he said "you look like you'd spill it".

He came to the pub with us once, finished up early one friday night and him and his brother Martin came in for a few pints in the Old Maylor. One of my best new years days was spent in the Maylor with Fionn, Steve, Jer and Martin. Every now and then Martin would pop back to the chipper and return 20 mins later with a basket of burgers and chips.

Sad to see him go.I wish him a happy retirement.

Out door cinema's

Here is one of those outdoor cinemas you may have heard of. They are great. You show up at 6-630 ish, have a picnic on the grass, have some cheese, wine and crackers, then the film starts when it gets dark, around 830ish. This one is on the grounds of the burswood casino, where my gig is at AND where we are playing on Paddies day.

Robots in Disguise

Check out this sight. I saw it last week, around the corner from our video library. The film is coming out on the 7th of April and some of the toys are out already. Cant wait!!!!

New Fruit

Check out this wierd new fruit we found a few days ago. Dragon Pearl Fruit. You can peel it by tearing off the green bits. On the inside it looks like a grey kiwi (lots of seeds) and tasted like a cross between a peach and a banana. They look really wierd!

Backstage Shots

Here is the most important room in the entire casino, the Pit. There is another room below the pit, we reckon that is where the phantom lives....

Here is a very inspirational shot. This is the backstage ramp that all the actors go up to get onstage. Someone taped in the word "enjoy" onto it, very thoughtfull

And here is the second most important room, the stars dressing room (usually occupied by the principle viola player....) Also, i found out last night that if the show runs over time by 5 mins, we all get an hours overtime pay! Ill be playing REALLY REALLY slowly during my solo........

My moment to shine

Here is that world famous 3 note viola solo from Fiddler on the Roof. About 12 songs into the show, i get my 6 seconds of fame as I dazzle the audience with my near perfect antiphonal response to Topols laments in what has to be the most illustrious and infamous D flat in all of violadom.

It was hilarious, at the first pit rehearsal, we all had to be sound checked individually, so naturally everyone played bits from their parts, usually the tune etc. I don’t have ANY recognizable tune in the entire 3 hours of the production. All i have is off beat cha-cha's and the occasional doubling of the winds, which makes it a really simple gig, but really boring too. I mean, even the percussionist has the tune at one point and all I get is that 3 bar, 3 note solo. Anyway, the sound checking, when it came around to me, i had to pretty much play the first thing that came into my mind, which was "happy birthday", and by pure co-incidence it was the oboe-ists birthday, the entire pit burst into song and they loved my little finishing pizzicato chord. I am pretty certain I will be hired again.

Martial Arts Equipment

John Hearne sent us a package the other day and look what was in it. A set of nunchucks. Classic!

Take two of these and call me in the morning

Check out this new wondercure i found in a shop the other day.

Happy Valentines Day Everyone

Check out the card I got from a certain secret admirer. Fantastic!

The Sisters New Blog

Hi World.

This is my sister Margaret, she has anew blog here: http://magzinthebigcity.blogspot.com/index.html Check it out, she has a few entries up already and is keeping up with the family blogging tradition. Huzzzah.

Watch out Chuck Norris

Chuck and Bruce hard at it

I am getting back in training, I found a club near me which teaches the same kung fu that I used to do in Ireland (wing chun). I am going to start it up once I have finished with this Fiddler gig. I am gonna get back into training, get back into shape, maybe do some competitions and in general get healthier this year. Also there are some incredible benefits to being a kung fu master including invisibility, origami skills AND an incredible sense of fashion.



Me as a ninja at a fancy dress party a few years ago. HHAAAIIIAAAGHH

Archive footage....

I just came across this old picture of me talking to a horse on the way back from a gig in 2004 that I would like to share with the world. That is all.

Sundays Big Day Out

We had a fantastic day yesterday. First day off in weeks (we do a lot of weekend gigs and stuff) SO we came up with a fantastic plan, which consisted of a lot of beer, so we had to make our list in picture form. It all started with a lovely breakfast, then a walk in the park with Reilly, then we made our way down the the main street and had lunch and a few beers, then we went to see james bond (which was fantastic) then had more beers and home. Things on the list we didn't do was fishing, ice cream and coffee's, all tasks we substituted with more beer. Great day, and my last day off until the 24th of March.

Here was the menu of the pub down the road from the cinema, this is from the pizza menu, have a look at the last item, I had that before, pretty filling!

The Birds Nest

Nadine found a birds nest in our tree the other day, sort of hard to make out in this photo, but its there. I think this is the bird that sounds a LOT like a cow that wakes us up in the mornings.

Extreme Alcohol Technology

I called round to the brewshop on saturday morning and found this stuff on the shelf. See the bottom: Extreme Alcohol Technology, makes it sound all futuristic! Turbo yeast. Just when beer making was starting to become a dull hobby.........

Hally meets Reilly

Kev came to one of our gigs last friday night and then came back home for a "few" beers. Here he is playing a few tunes for Reilly

Then the good stuff came out, this is a 2006 beer (2006 was a good year)

And here he is on the phone to his twin who was 9 hours behind in time and about 9 pints behind as well!

Recruitment Consultant....

Once upon a time there was a shepherd looking after his sheep on the side of a deserted road. Suddenly a brand new Porsche screeches to a halt.

The driver, a young man, dressed in an Armani Suit, Ray-Bans, Tag-Heuer watch, Cerutti Shoes and a Boss tie gets out and asks the shepherd, "If I can tell you how many sheep you have, will you give me one of them?"

The shepherd looks at the young man, then looks at the large flock of sheep and replies, "Okay". The young man parks the car, connects his laptop to his mobile-fax, enters NASA Webster, scans the ground using his GPS, opens a database and 60 Excel tables filled with logarithms and pivot tables, then prints out a 150-page report on his high tech mini printer.

He turns to the shepherd and says, "You have exactly 1586 sheep."

The shepherd answers "That`s correct . You can have your choice of sheep " .

The young man takes an animal and puts it in the back of his Porsche.

The shepherd looks at him and asks "If I guess your profession will you return my animal to me?"

The young man answers "Yes, why not?"

The shepherd says, " You are a Recruitment Consultant " .

"How did you know? " asks the young man.

"Very simple," answers the shepherd. "First you came here without being called. Second, you charged me a fee to tell me something I already knew, and third, you don’t understand anything about my business " .

" Now can I have my dog back?"

No need for a television ever again!

No need for a television ever again!
A friend pointed me in the direction of this website:
http://www.tv-links.co.uk/
this morning. Its by far the most usefull website I have ever been to. Its got links to pretty much every half decent telly program and cartoon made in the last 20 years.
You can watch them on your computer OR download them to your computer and watch them later by copying and pasting the link into this website:
http://javimoya.com/blog/youtube_en.php
and then use the FLV player (free) which you can get here:
http://www.download.com/FLV-Player/3000-2139_4-10467082.html
Sounds a bit long winded but WELL worth it. Enjoy.

The Bird Flew

An ironic verb or an epidemic? Here is a map of all the countries with poultry or wild birds killed by in light red and the dark red indicates countries with human cases of H5N1. Now its in the UK, there is a pretty good review of whats going on here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_spread_of_H5N1 . I predict that Hillbillys chicken burger sales are about to plummet!