When it rains............

You know the way everything happens at once, well, on acount of being really busy now with gigs and teaching in my new job I had to make the hardest phonecall I have made in a long time today.I had to phone a booking agent in town and turn down the Jerry Lewis gig. I have been a fan of this guy since I was about 7, all those old black'n'white movies which were on RTE eyars ago starring him and Dean Martin were, and still are, some of my favourite films. He is doing one night only, next wednesday, and I'm too busy to do it. wwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa



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Kalamunda Zig Zag Festival

I had a few bizarre gigs over the weekend. The only one I have photos of are of the Kalamunda Zig Zag Festival . I played witha band called the Blue Celts, irishy/blues(y) stuff, twas mighty fun. The only downside was that it was an outdoor gig and I forgot to wear sunscreen on my arms so one arm (under the violin) is the usual irish pasty white and one arm (bow arm) is totally red. We used to get this in cork years ago when we were busking, we called buskers tan.



There were stalls selling food, artwares, scented soap, everything. This one in the distance was called Turkish-Deeelite, turkish delight is my favourite so i made a beeline for it only to find out that all they did was turkish pancakes. boooooo.


There was heaps of bands playing and a few other acts too, this is a gymnastics group from a local school.


Here we see a rope bridge made by the boy scouts that morning. It was really cool.



And check this out, its from a stall which was selling drums, the backs of which were cleverly done up with string patterns. I went up and was about to ask what type of drum it was but the stall-lady beat me to it by saying "So, what do ya wanna hit" to which I replied "George Bush", we started laughing, just the usual few guffaws like, then i stopped laughing and tried to ask her about the drums, but she kept laughing, insanely belly laughing, for waaaay longer than normal, so i just kinda backed away and went off to do my gig. Wierd.

More from the head factory

SO. I went to the Might Quinn last night for "cork night". It was a meal and a show by John Spilane (singing, not cooking). Sure enough I was working late and cycled to the place (remember the 5k zone) with the intent of having a few pints and sneaking off early to finish off the work i had started earlier. No sooner had I walked in the door than I was greated by the man himself, John Spilane. It started like this, "Ah there ya are Charlie, hows it going, look, right, ok, the first one is in F, then we go into G, come in at the second chorus with a hornpipe....eh where's your fiddle"? Back on the bike i went, pulled a lap record from the quinn to home and back again, parked the bike, took a moment to catch my breath, walked in the door, no sooner than i said to the barman "I require two of your finest guinness and directions to the loo", I heard from the stage "ladies and gentlemen, here he is, the fiddler on the roof, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage, Charlie McCarthy, yaaaayyyyyyy". So thats how it started, We played a fair load of tunes ALL of which i never heard before, including a lovely song about passage west, and after him were two more guys who got up and did a few of the usual numbers, i ended up paying with them too. I left the place around 7 hours later. Im never leaving the house without an instrument again!

Here is the man himself, blasting away some new tunes from the industrious creative centre of inspiration from which he creates all his songs, the "head factory"
And here we see David Lee and his wife Carmel completely blinded by the flash on my phone at around midnight.


And finally, a quick video of the man in action. More photos to follow as folks email them to me.

Dowtcha boy

You say tomato

Komradski Peadar called me this morning, after one of the opera's in wexford and told me a little gag they have going on:

You say carmina, I say carmana
You say burina, I say burana
Carmina, carmana
Burina, burana
Let's Carl the whole thing Orff

Also, Peadar and Vicky's son, Fionn, is nearly 10 months old, and is currently leading the table in the International Fionn League (soon to be made official with categories and a league table and everything), followed in a close second by my dog, Fionn, and trailing in last place on account of a recent penalty for falling behind his annual quota of enchiladas is Fionn (the original).

was he brilliant or what

So, there I was, at home, just got back from walking the dogs, and i got the call "Charlie, this is Fred, John Spillane landed today and he is looking to do something tonight, do you still have that session on a wednesday?". A quick exchange of details and lo and behold, who walks in the door only John Spillane himself,off the plane only a matter of hours. He got up and sang a few songs, including the Irish national anthem, in Irish, which he will be singing in the middle of the subiaco oval for the compromised rules game on friday. He was great craic and stayed for the whole night, he is off on a tour of oz for the next month,a few of us are going to see him on monday in a pub not too far from where I live for a night which is being called "Cork night...like".

York Car museum

We took a trip to the old car museum while we were in york, here are a few of teh highlights.

This is a Fiat, and was one of the first cars in oz.

Check out this beauty, i can see these coming back in to fashion

This one is a ferrarri with a mazaratti engine, in 1906 it hit 198mph, it steers with a rudder.

And here is another one, the entire front of the car is a door!

My upgraded tux

I had a big gig this saturday, conducting my new orchestra in a school concert (same school that Heath Ledger went to) It was an all day rehersal and a nighttime concert, I got tired of walking around the place with my baton so in the spirit of MacGuyver i 'modified' my good ol'reliable ex-rental black-tie tux jacket with a baton holder.

the hill in york

Here is the view from the top of that hill, the next hill is 2600kms away in adelaide and there is NOTHING in between other than dust, rocks and lost tourists.

Finn-cam

So, we went to the York Jazz Fest
last weekend and took the Finn Man. Here are a few pictures of him over the weekend.

Here he is with his new favourite toy, Lightning McQueen from cars, its great, you can program it to do all sorts of cool stuff. After he went to bed i had great fun with it.

Here he is with Oliver, we went with our friends Magda and Martin and we took the two kids.

Here he is enjoying a bath, Finn loves the ol baths.

And here we are on top of a rock on top of a hill. Not many of these in Perth (hills), ill post more pictures of the view in a bit.

Antique Tech

I know you all know how much i am into technology, well you may also know that I REALLY like old old old tech as well, check out these specimens from a house we stayed in at the York Jazz Fest.

the beard is back

Well, it took just over a week to cultivate a reasonable beard from scratch which is my best lap record to date. Here I am in my new office, check out the pure fancy pictures on the wall (yes, that is a sheet of 3 octave scales on the right, I work'em hard)

Wonderfull Concert

We went to see Stevie Wonder the other night in the burswood dome. He played for two and a half hours straight, amazing gig, the guy has such energy! Here is the view we had from our seats, not as good as the last time we were there.

The Kong Debacle

Ok. Some of you know this story, some of you don't. Here it is, its official. We are the worst neighbours ever.

 
Many of you know the name Kong and associate it with a larger than average gorilla, capable of climbing huge buildings, wrestling dinosaurs and generally being grumpy on account of never being able to find a banana big enough. Well, this is so. Kong is also the name of a dog toy.
 
It is a reinforced rubber dog toy, which you can fit treats into and the dogs spend a bit of time chewing them and getting the food out. We find these things really usefull as the dogs chew these and not our shoes/furniture/clothes/chairs etc.
 
Here we see Fionn thoroughly engrossed with his Kong. Now, occasionally we have been known to shout out things like "Fionn, wheres the kong, wheres the kong, go get the kong, did you loose the kong, go get it go get it go get it gogogogogogo eat the kong, get the kong, Reilly did you bury your kong, dig the kong dig the kong, wheres the kong? eat the kong get it get it get it kong kong kong" etc. you get the idea. Weeeeeeeeeeeeellllllllllllllllllll this was going well for about 2 years. One day a letter for our back-door neighbours ended up in our letterbox by accident. Our block is sub-divided so we have a neighbour about 2 meters behind us, with their own side passage entrance(see the blog below of the gazeebo, thats his house). We always thought we lived in front of a family of chinese people called the WONGS, oooh nooo noo no, you guessed it, its actually the KONGS.
 
Here is another chinese person looking suitably miffed about his Irish neighbours (and its a blatent crack to get Andy Lau on my blog). We moved in here about 2 years ago and had a house warming about a month later once we settled in. We invited all the neighbors, Liam, Derrick, Wayne etc. and have had them all over since for several parties etc, except the Wongs/Kongs they have always been sort of hesitant/scared of us for some reason. Its because they think we have been training our dogs to eat them. :-0

I often put myself in their place, with them training their dogs to eat the mccarthy, get the mccarthy etc. On a few occasions i have sat in my bar after a beer,kong toy in hand, rationally contemplating to go around the back and explain the whole debacle to Mr.Kong (first name Kinh, i kid you not) but each time i can just picture myself bursting into hilarity as i hold a rubber dog toy and relate his familys inate fear of dogs, specifically my dogs, to a simple co-incidence of names. Whenever they come out the front to get their post or bins they always do it pretty fast. Being asian and only recently moved here from suburban asia, they wouldnt have had much experience with domestic pets so its understandable for them to have some sort of trepidation when it comes to canines, but for them to hear their drunken irish neighbors actively training their dogs to get the kong,eat the kong, bury the kong, thats just out there man, you couldn't write that stuff.

So there you go, the Kong debacle. If anyone would like to comment on this and offer advice/state their amusement/scold me on my manic pseudo-racist treatment of my neighbors then please click the link below.

Get the kong.

beardwatch

 
BEARDWATCH, Day 5. Its been a gruelling week of facial folical cultivation. I managed to get through three gigs looking as scruffy as murphy this weekend. Hopefully i can go the extra mile today and emerge tomorrow much like the butterfly from its chrysalis, as a fully bearded year 9 tutor. Yeah, back to school tomorrow and I need the power of beard otherwise i wont look as intelligent as i stroke my chin and make up answers to their miriad of wierd questions.

other goings-on in the subcontinent

Well, the ol beard is coming along nicely, ill take a picture in a while and blog it. Other than that the last week of the holidays passed by pretty rapidly, back to school tomorrow, for another eight weeks then ten weeks holidays. Oh de life. We got a chance to catch up on a whole heap of jobs on the gaff this last week, got the garden back in order, planted some stuff, which going by our track record with plants, is all dooooomed to die a waterless death. I managed to get a replacement cover for our gazeeeebo and fitted it today.
 
 
Here is a picture from a wedding we did on top of a hill along the river the other day, it looked a lot better than that, i have to get a better camera.
 
And here are the two drivers of the wedding, once everything got underway they both hopped into the front seat of the same car with their lunch eskys, two old boys, and had some sandwiches and a sneaky wee drop. Classic stuff.
 
And check this, we all went for a cycle today. James and Mikel from the german party, Jennika the cellist and Jane and I all headed off on a big mad cycle today. It was great. I even had a go of Jennikas racing bike, i never had a go off a real bike before. Now i understand how all those pro's can average such awesome speeds, these things are built to GO!

the mutts

 
Its been a while since i blogged the hounds so here they are. Here is Reilly in her usual "welcome to the strand" pose.
 
And here is Fionn in one of his sedate moments, conteplating where to eventuate his next poo
 
And here are the two of them having a rest in the hallway the other day.

Folically challenged

 
I went and shaved myself a great big novelty german moustache for the oktoberfest fancy dress party (come dressed as your favourite german, oliver came as a certain german dictator). Here is me with Anna. Look at that chin! I forgot i even had one. NOBODY in australia has seen me without a beard. So once the shock factor of that strategic shave wore off half way through the party i went one step further and gave myself the chopper reed look...
 
How wierd do i look now?!?!? Imagine my shock as i admired myself in the mirror this morning and was greeted with that visage! i was teaching about 30 mins later so i had to shave the rest of it off, for the first time in 6, nearly 7 years i can feel the breeze on my lower face area, and i have to tell ya its really disconcerting going to think about something and do my trademark stroke of the ol'beard and find a bare chin!
 
Compare that clean shaven feen with this happy, delighted to be hairy, bearded feen below.
 
As of 1 hour ago i am back on full hair growing mode!

oktoberfest 3

 
This was one of the games, Liam next door was the champion holding his glass for 9 mins and 2 seconds followed closely by James Charles at 8 mins 50 secs.
 
Here is Mikel, Derrick and James sporting the finest lederhosen this side of the rhine.
 
I aranged a few polka's for the polkathon game, where two teams heard the song, then had ten mins to arrange and coreograph a team-polka dance-off. It was hilarious! Thats Bill there on the ooompa toooba.
 
And here are a few guys from team 2 doing 'that' german dance