News Bulletin Number #12
News Bulletin Number #12
Hello my loyal newsletter readers!
I’M LATE
Okay. wow. I’m so SORRY about the delay with this newsletter. The country (Australia) has reopened and I’ve been travelling around performing my stand up comedy to the masses. As a result (and it pains me to say), this newsletter has played second fiddle.
THANK GOD I’M A COUNTRY BOY
I’ve been zipping all around the place and one of things I did was tour with the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Roadshow in regional NSW. We did some shows in Tamworth and I went to the Australian Country Music Hall of Fame Museum!
They’re so proud of country music in Tamworth. It’s everywhere. Country towns love to be proud of their stuff. It’s great. In the city no one cares about anything. We all work a million hours a week, hate the place we live, hate all our friends and are just blindly pushing through till our eventual breakdowns and mid life crisis.
Country towns even love their shops. I would do this joke on stage about going to McDonalds and people would come up to me after the shows to proudly tell me they have 3 McDonald’s restaurants in their town; one at the start of town, one in the middle of town, and one on the way out of town.
I agree it’s pretty cool you can have McDonalds whenever you want, but I also think it’s a weird thing to brag about. I’ve never told someone I live in Sydney, then been like “by the way, we have 312 McDonalds stores in Sydney…so yeah….that gives you an idea about the kinda place I choose to live…”
In Tamworth they have a big country music festival once a year. It’s a huge deal – people come from all over to hear songs about utes, heartache and shearing sheep.
Australian country music is so funny because to me it feels like they’re all pretending. Like they’re cosplaying what they think country people in America do.
Does that make sense? It’s like when you see people in the park playing LARPING games.
It’s not real! To me country music artists are doing the same thing just not admitting they’re pretending.
Why are they wearing cowboy hats when they do press interviews on Sunrise? They’re in Martin Place in Sydney!
Whenever I see someone in a cowboy hat in Australia I think “Oh you must be on your way to a fancy dress party.”
This is a country music song by Lee Kernaghan called ‘Mates’. I know these links are a bore to click, but please listen to this song at some point in your life.
The lyrics are crazy! They’re about drunk driving and crashing, beating up a man because he flirts with your friend’s girlfriend, plus something to do with a kangaroo.
Maaaatess, daaaaamn good maaates.
It’s so catchy.
GRETA OH CAPTAIN MY CAPTAIN
I’ve been thinking about Greta Thunburg a lot lately. Not because I think she’s a certified time-traveller (even though there’s clear evidence of that – look it up and you’ll agree with me), but because I was reading an article about how she refuses to fly because it’s bad for the environment, so she sails a boat around the world, country to country.
That’s amazing, right?
No one talks about that enough. Everyone bangs on about how she’s the voice of a generation, single handedly taking the climate fight to governments and big business, but can we stop for a second and acknowledge that she must be a hell of a sailor?!
She’s out on the open ocean! It’s not like she’s on a little harbour cruise, or drinking prosecco whilst gently trudging down the Yarra or Swan river. She’s sailing a boat internationally.
She’s been doing this since she was 14!!!
We lined the shores of the harbour for Jessica Watson when she sailed around the world. Greta is literally doing that every weekend!
If I was putting together a crew for the Sydney to Hobart, Greta would be my first pick. Straight up. She could probably captain Wild Oats with her experience. She could win us back the America’s Cup!
Sometimes I feel sorry for Greta. She’s only 18 and I do wonder if she wants the life of a normal teenager. Yes history will remember her as the person that saved us all from mass extinction, but surely occasionally she must wanna have pre-drinks at Lizzy’s before knocking back a few dodgy biker-made pills like everyone else her age.
I also feel for her because she’s so famous, yet doesn’t get to make the money people as famous as her make.
I think she should start doing ads! Like subtle ones. Sponsored posts would be perfect.
Imagine if you logged on to instagram, and Greta had uploaded a story being like “okay, so a lot of people have been asking me about my skin care routine…swipe up to buy!”
Or she should at least monitise her famous catchphrases! Like do a TV ad where she walks out and goes “How dare you!!….drink Dare Iced Coffee..”
The drink would fly off the shelves!
Whatever. She’s a time traveller and last time I checked time travellers don’t need money so I’m sure she’ll be fine.
SWITCHING IT UP
I was talking to my friend Jared at a wedding a few weeks ago (yes weddings are back and suck as much as they did before) and he told me the craziest thing I’ve heard in ages:
He and his girlfriend live together, and every night they swap sides of their bed to sleep.
I was flabbergasted.
That’s insane, right? No one does that? Surely? You pick a side and then you’re stuck with it until you break up or move house (often those things happen at the same time).
How could you get any routine going in your life if you’re constantly swapping. Every morning you’d wake up confused and have a weird day.
I think they’re trying to find a loophole in the ‘waking up on the wrong side of the bed’ thing. Like they’re trying to trick the system and keep the universe guessing.
It would never work with me and my girlfriend. No matter what side we sleep on, she takes the middle of the bed, and throughout the course of the night slowly pushes me to the side where I end up with only one arm and one leg left on the bed, the other limbs dangling off the side. I’ll be clinging to the bed, trying to get as much sleep as possible before I end up falling and plummeting to the bedroom floor.
Also, I look over and her arms are spread out all over the bed, her legs and torso twisting at right angles – every time she sleeps it looks like she’s halfway through a game of Twister.
The other morning we woke up and she was like “you barely touched me last night!”
I wanted to say “I had more pressing issues! I was one step away from buying one of those safety harnesses builders use on construction sites so I could strap myself in and finally get a bit of shut eye!”
Look, my point is, if we had to swap sides it would be even more stressful. Currently when I wake up on the floor it’s comforting to know that even though I’m on the floor, it’s my side of the floor.
GOODBYE
Farewell and thank you for reading! I will endeavour to crank these out again on a more regular basis, but in the meantime; have a great Christmas, don’t get Covid, get drunk on New Year’s Eve, and please watch that Lee Kernaghan clip above.
Oh btw – if you’re reading this today (Wednesday) and are in Sydney over the weekend, Tom Cashman, Cameron James and myself are doing a bunch of new material shows Thursday-Saturday. They’ll be fun and Cashman will buy you a beer.
Feliz Navidad! xx
P.S if you’ve missed any of my other newsletters and want to catch up, you can here. Follow me on Insta, here’s my podcast, and subscribe to my Youtube channel x