Sam Taunton News Bulletin Number #3
Hello hello hello hi!
Apologies for the delay. Who would have thought finding forty-five minutes every two weeks to type a thousand words would be so difficult but here we are!
I’d love to say people have been hounding my inbox for updates being like “where’s the newsletter!” and “I’m refreshing my Gmail every five minutes!”
But instead the only emails I seem to get are from Anytime Fitness being like “Hi Sam! Where have you been? We’ve missed you?!”
Anyway, I’ve been in the country on another Melbourne Comedy Festival Roadshow tour. We had to escape Sydney due to COVID-19 (which I’ve been told is like the Y2K bug).
Whilst these tours are super fun, they don’t leave a lot of time for writing a newsletter. It’s more writing your name in blood on the bathroom mirror as you leave the rural motor lodge you spent the night above the sheets on.
I think I’m bringing a negative energy into the newsletter space. I need to be positive. I’ll snap out of it.
Okay, into the headlines!
WE BOUGHT A ZOO
A few days ago myself and a bunch of comedians went to the Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo. The Lions couldn’t be fucked turning out for us (I don’t blame them to be honest. It was the weekend after all. Take some time for yourself, Lions) but that meant I spent more time with the second tier zoo animals.
I love the second tier zoo animals. You get more bang for your buck. I’m talking hippos, meerkats, zebras etc. Obviously big players in zoo world, but not your A-Listers. Less crowds, better photo opportunities.
I watched the giraffes getting fed and got chatting to the lady in charge. She was telling me the zoo recently got a two-year-old male giraffe, so it could breed with the other twelve females in the group.
That’s his role.
Just to have sex with the other females.
They can’t have more than one male in the group because they’ll get angry and fight so this two-year-old fella has to get in there and have sex with them all.
He has to service all twelve of these female giraffes. That’s too much pressure!
Imagine moving into a sharehouse with twelve other girls and you’re like “hey, how much is rent?” And they’re like “oh don’t worry about the money, you just have to fuck all of us…”
I’m breaking out in a cold sweat just thinking about it!
And you know they’d talk. How could they not?
Like you’d catch two of them in the corner of the house and you’d be like “hey, what are you guys talking about??”
And they’d be like “ummm what do you think we’re talking about, Sam?…You literally have fucked all of us…you think we’re not going to talk about it?! It’s actually all we talk about. You’re having sex with all of us and we all live in this one house. Also you’re like two-years-old.
That’s so weird.
Also you’re not on the lease?! We’re all on the lease and you just appeared one day and you started fucking all twelve of us one by one. Mary told us you said her neck was the longest….wtf…”
I looked him in the eye and could see the weight of the world on his shoulders (his long neck).
SCHOOL OF ROCK
I did a show in Armidale and performed stand up comedy in a theatre that was attached to the fanciest private boarding school I’ve ever seen. It was like Hogwarts but instead of moving staircases, it had tennis courts and an elite rugby program that will shape this country’s next generation of high profile sexual assault cases.
The show was fun, but there was no heating in the venue and it was one degree the entire time I was performing. I wore a beanie on stage for god-sake.
I’m such a little bitch when it’s cold. I hate it. A guy from the venue was there and was trying to be cool and was like “mate, you think this is cold?! This is nothing!! You should see it when it really gets cold?! This is singlet weather mate hahah you’re soft mate!!!!”
People getting mucho about not being cold is one of the worst traits a person can have. (behind correcting grammar in texts, and referring to the dollar price of something as ‘dollarydoos’)
You know the type? They take pride in not being cold. Like it’s a competition. They’re always like, “You cold mate?! Not me. You call this cold?! Haha not even an issue!”
Like alright dude, how about you don’t bring me into whatever is going on with your life, okay?
If the temp says it’s cold, and I think it’s cold, then I’m allowed to be cold!
Like I don’t know what happened in your childhood.
Did you get locked in a freezer room and your parents forgot about you?
Now everytime you feel a chill you don’t want to react because it reminds you of the time you felt cold and unloved so you deny the cold temperatures as a way of protecting yourself and never putting yourself out there because ultimately you don’t want to be forgotten again?!
Just put a jacket on and go to therapy!
AIR TRANSPORT
I thought they’d drive me to Armidale but instead they put me on a tiny little plane. It only had 30 seats, tiny propellers, and the pilot kinda looked like Jessica Watson (which is bad because in my head she’ll be sixteen forever, and as we all know, sixteen is far too young to be a commercial pilot).
I hate propeller planes.
I love jet engine planes because they magically fly thru the air. I find that comforting because it’s above my level of intelligence and if I don’t understand something, then I also don’t understand how it can breakdown.
But a propeller plane even a dummy like me gets it: they just strap a couple of ceiling fans to the side of a train and the ceiling fans spin really fast and bang – they’re in the air!
A propeller you know that if it stops spinning, you die.
It’s scary!
My least favourite form of aviation is hot air ballooning.
I never get why hot air balloons are supposed to be romantic.
When people think of hot air ballooning it’s always couples kissing, drinking champagne and proposing. But in reality it’s a cold snotty nose and holding on for dear life as the basket lands in a cow-shit filled paddock.
I’ve only been hot air ballooning once.
It was the least romantic thing to ever happen to me.
We got up in the sky, and the pilot turns to me (also I think it’s cute he calls himself a ‘pilot’…he has an advanced Tafe degree in picnicking) and says “hey man, do you want to see another another hot air balloon??”
I don’t know how hot air balloons work. So I thought he meant he’d fly me over to another hot air balloon, then we’d wave at the other hot air balloon like we were on a boat.*
(*Side-note: You know how when you’re on a boat, you wave at other boats when they go past? Why does that only happen on boats? That’s weird, right? I’ve never waved at anyone in a car, but pop me on a boat, and the minute another boat goes past, I turn into a 3 year-old and my arm starts waving faster than a souped-up metronome being like “oh my god. I’M ON A BOAT. YOU’RE ON A BOAT. WE’RE BOTH ON BOATS. WE BOTH GOT THE FERRY TODAY. THE LAWS OF THE SEA DICTATE WE MUST WAVE AT EACH OTHER.)
So I was like “sure, let’s see another hot air balloon.”
Then he reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and got up a video of him flying another hot air balloon!
So I was in a hot air balloon with the pilot, looking at a video of him flying another hot air balloon.
It felt like a babushka doll of hot air balloons! That’s not romantic at all. Imagine being in an Uber and the driver shows you a video of him doing another Uber pickup??
You’d switch to DiDi. (Not an option in the hot air balloon game).
Anyway, something to think about next time you’re in the air.
POP CULTURE
I watched the movie Indecent Proposal the other night.
It was so awesome. It has a rating of 4.2 on IMDB (+ 32% on Rotten Tomatoes) but I think it’s worth so much more.
This is the plot:
Robert Redfern is a crazy billionaire (but you never really find out what he does for work. He’s just always in a fancy suit looking very smug). He meets a young couple played by Demi Moore and Woody Harreslon. They’re recently married, all loved-up holidaying in Vegas, and spend the first 10 mins of the movie having sex.
ANYWAY Redfern sees Demi Moore in a dress store and gets the hots for her, and get this – offers them ONE MILLION DOLLARS for a night with Demi!
One million!
Imagine offering someone $1million for a night of sex!
I think I loved the movie because once a man on Instagram offered me $100 for some pictures of my feet so I feel like I can relate to Demi in some small way.
The rest of the movie kinda involves gaslighting, weird grey areas around consent and reducing a woman’s self worth to her physical appearance.
It’s worth it to see Woody Harrelson pretending to be a fancy architect wearing sweaters and thick rimmed glasses tho.
A must watch!
GOODBYE
Thank you so much for reading! Once I get off this goddam rural tour I’ll be able to devote my heart and soul into these newsletters and quite frankly, that excites me a lot. The mountains we will climb! The newsletter industry won’t know what hit it!
In the meantime please enjoy this video as a token of my appreciation.
Goodbye and good luck!
xx
Samuel Carlton Taunton (yes yes my full name).