Sam Taunton News Bulletin Number #4
HELLO! HI! HOW ARE YOU?!
This newsletter comes to you from the world of Sydney lockdown!
I feel like I might be responsible for the latest lockdown.
Not that I spread COVID around (well maybe I did, it’s always hard to say – it blows my mind that I haven’t had it seeing as though I live everyday like a first year uni student doing pre-drinks), but because for the last 6 months I’ve been doing stand up about how great Sydney was at dealing with the pandemic. It definitely feels like I jinxed the whole thing!
COVID has been really good for state premiers. Besides my own premier (Queen Gladys), I would never have been able to name a state premier in this country. Thanks to COVID, they’re all on the tips of our tongues!
Mark McCowan, Anastasia Palecek, Steven Marshall (South Australia), Micheal Gunner – these are names that mean nothing to me! But thanks to COVID, they still mean, well, nothing really – but they probably mean as much as like a cast member on Married At First Sight??
That’s something at least!
It got me thinking about former state premiers. These are my top 5 Australian state premiers of all time:
Jeff Kennett – Victoria Premier 1992-99
Weird looking unit with a big nose who is the current president of the Hawthorn Football Club (eww) and also the founder and former chairman for Beyond Blue (which is actually pretty cool for those with the Black Dog). He also used to suck up to the Melbourne Greek community at election time which made the Melbourne Macedonian community angry and they used to refer to him as ‘Jeff Kennettopoulos’ which is soooo funny.
What a skip!
Joh Bjelke-Petersen – QLD Premier 1968-1987
Don’t know much about this bloke except people say he was absolutely nuts and I have a lot of time for that in a politician. He used to push to the Queensland public a ‘fear of southern homosexuals’ which is insane but I also love that he thought gay people only lived in southern states and not Queensland. An insane leader!
Kristina Keneally – NSW Premier 2009-2011
Ended up being CEO of the National Basketball League which has to be the biggest fall from grace for any political leader worldwide. Even I’m overqualified to run the NBL in this country. She’s in the federal senate now which I guess is a bounce back. Still, her CV will forever be tarnished.
Also she was born in Ohio so it was awesome to see a premier in a press conference say “G’day!” with a thick American accent.
Peter Beattie – QLD Premier 1998-2007
A Queenslander who popped up running the NRL. I think we can all agree looking after Australia’s rugby league players is a much harder job than running Australia’s 3rd biggest state. All the respect in the world, Pete.
Mike Baird – NSW Premier 2014-2017
A very boring man who will always be remembered for banning greyhound racing, then two weeks later being like “oh shit, sorry guys, actually got that one wrong. Let the doggies race!!”
Incredibly funny/yet slightly depressing that the only time collective public outrage and protesting over public policy in Australia worked has been when they said you could no longer have a punt on doggies.
He’s retired now, but apparently he’s at Wentworth Park every Wednesday night having a sausage sizzle and cheering on his trifecta.
THE HEADLINES
Normally I do headlines in these newsletters, but I’ve literally done 3 things in the last week (walk to buy a coffee, Google facts to win arguments with my housemate, and the last one is private).
Basically that means there are no headlines. Which is hard because I try and base the newsletter to be like one of those annoying live blog things all media outlets do instead of actually publishing an article.
When did that become the way we decided we all wanted to consume the news?!
It sucks! You want to find out daily COVID numbers and you have to scroll back through every 5 minute update from the last 24 hours.
And it’s never relatable. It’s always like:
“11:53am – Health minister says something depressing!”
“11:44am – NRL player in trouble..”
“11:39 – New study finds Panda’s sex-drive getting lower and lower..”
Just tell me the COVID numbers!
Quick side note though, I do love the panda sex-drive articles that always seem to be at the bottom of news.com.au and Dailymail stories.
Everyone is obsessed with how little Pandas want to have sex. Maybe they’re just ASEXUAL!
DID YOU EVER THINK ABOUT THAT MAINSTREAM MEDIA?!
Shouldn’t we be supporting the pandas and be accepting of who they are and what they want to do?
Instead we’re like “they don’t want to fuck! They’re freaks!”
My solution would be to send them to a sex therapist. Bring the excitement back for the pandas. Maybe it’s all gone stale and they need to try new things?
They could do role-play! Like one of them pretends to be a different kind of bear?
We could get one of the pandas to dress up as a sexy polar bear, and hit on the other pandas being like,
“Hmm that’s some nice bamboo, you want to suck on my ice cold polar bear body?!”
Then once the other panda gets over the fact that a polar bear is in the forest in China, thousand of kilometres away from its natural habitat, I reckon it would get horny and be keen!
Hmmm. I’m basically writing panda erotic fiction. I guess this lockdown is having more of an effect on me than I thought.
Okay I’ll try a headline.
I CAN’T RUN PROPERLY
I’ve been exercising a lot.
I like to go running in the morning with my hoodie on and pretend I’m in a Rocky movie.
Pretending to be in a boxing movie is actually the most fun you can have when exercising. Everything is on the line. You can fantasise that there’s a deep fire burning inside of you to prove yourself, as opposed to the bowl of hot chips that normally occupies my mind when doing any exercise.
Once I was out running and Australian boxer Tim Tyszu ran past me. I was like “woaaah that guy looks like he knows what he’s doing” and looked around and it was Tim. Hood up, shadow boxing!
It was actually like a scene from Rocky! So I yelled “Go get em Timmy! You’re the champ!”
He looked back at me, raised his fist in the air and ran off.
Honestly, and I’m not exaggerating, and maybe this is an insight into how simple my world is, but it was easily in the top 2 moments of my life.
The other day I was out running in the park and after I finished the run, this really fit grizzled 65 year-old man (no face mask either btw. Hope he’d had his AstraZeneca!) came up to me and started talking.
He was real fit. Big muscles, tanned, skin tight activewear – a grandfather with abs basically.
If you’re at pension age you have no business with a body fat count that low. There’s nothing normal about it and it makes me feel uneasy! Isn’t that weird. Enjoy your retirement! Go play golf or lawn bowls. Isn’t the dream to get old and fat?!
Anyway, he comes up to me and says “I was watching you running, kid (yes he actually called me kid..)…I was watching you and let me tell you, you’ve got something!”
I was shocked, I thought “this is my big break!? I’m being discovered! I’m going to be Australia’s next Steve Moneghetti or Cathy Freeman!”
But instead he said “you’ve got the worst running technique I’ve ever seen. It’s horrible. Never seen anything like it. You kick your legs back so far it looks like you’re trying to dig a hole…”
I thought I was going to have a heart attack! Probably from the first serious cardio I had done all year, but more from the crushing blow to my ego.
Running technique?!
I didn’t even know that was a thing?! I thought we all just learnt at birth. In the same way we all just know how to breath. Imagine walking down the street and someone stops to tell you you’ve got the worst breathing technique they’ve ever seen.
Running is just one foot in front of the other and I somehow managed to get it wrong.
Anyway, so long story short, I’ve spent an hour a day for the last 3 days watching Youtube videos on how to run properly.
I feel like I’ve been in a serious car accident and am rehabbing how to walk properly (oh my god – maybe potentially to make my comeback in a boxing movie?!?! Yesssss).
GETTING THE JAB
I booked in for the vaccine!
I haven’t got it yet, but it’s exciting I qualified! I always think when I fill out any form they’ll come back to me and say “umm, okay Mr Taunton, this is weird, but it turns out you don’t exist. You’re not real, no one has any recollection of meeting you and we’re going to take you in for questioning…”
Maybe an irrational fear, but still a fear that I have.
I have asthma so I qualify for the good one as well, not the shitty AstraZeneca.
It’s so funny that we have a good version and a shitty version of the vaccine. It’s awesome. It gives everyone another reason and excuse to be self-righteous and look down on people.
It’s like when you tell someone you went to a shitty school and you watch them smirk and be really smug about it:
“Oh Nowra High School?! Wow great! Awww how cute! Haha such a nice place! Honestly I’ve heard really nice things about it..”
So with the vaccine we can be like:
“Oh my god wow you got the AstraZeneca! No..umm…yeah…that’s awesome…no..no..no…what? No I don’t think it’s bad???…haha what makes you say that??? No no my face always smirks like this…Hey look in all seriousness I know…a lot…of…umm…people that have gotten the AstraZeneca and they’ve turned out fine…don’t beat yourself up…I’m just saying…just because I’m getting the good vaccine and you’re getting the shitty vaccine, doesn’t make me a better person…it just means I’m getting a better product than you…anyway…umm it was great to see you….good luck with all that vaccine stuff…sounds like you’ll need it lol”
Anyway Anthony Mundine says vaccines aren’t real and I believe him so if you want the robots to win maybe think about that before you let a qualified health professional stick a world health organisation approved needle in your arm! You’re all sheep!
POP CULTURE
Rory Scovel: Live Without Fear
I could have listed the 47 different shows/movies/videos I’ve watched in the last 9 days, but I really loved this one!
Rory Scovel is one of my favourite comedians and he’s released a special/documentary! It’s a bunch of improvised sets recorded 6 nights in a row at Relapse Theatre in Atlanta. It also has an interesting side story about the theatre owner and the struggles he had creating a community arts space. It’s cool and goes into the challenges of doing improvised stand up every night (which tbh is something I find super easy. I’ve never written a joke in my life. I make it all up every time I take the stage.)
SIGNING OFF FOR TODAY
Signing off for today! (like the live blogs). Will check back in tomorrow. I think we can all agree this has been an average newsletter but what do you expect when Sydney is on a knife’s edge! You’re lucky I even put pen to paper!
P.S – I’m supposed to be doing shows at Brisbane Comedy Festival on the 24th and 25th of July – I think it will be a miracle if I’m out of Sydney lockdown by then but at this stage they’re going ahead so please grab some tickets and come!
Xxx