Sly bastards, pretending to be dead. We know they are casing the joint out for their giant overlords.
I know it is trite to bring out the 'wacky' spam messages for easy blogfiller, but check out the email I got in my junk mail this morning:
From : Tom Schmitt
Sent : Friday, 21 January 2005 1:59:26 AM
To : “tvotr@yahoo.com”
Subject : Everything I Need To Know, I've Learned From Iron Maiden
You are cordially invited to a balls-out, historically enlightening journey through time- courtesy of the world's foremost headbanging historians!
http://www.spazoutny.com/ironmaiden.htm
Hail Satan,
Tom
Good shit.
On the night of Saturday, February 26th, me and some colleagues of mine will be running 'Aid for Asia' at an as yet to be determined venue. We are seeking the Flying Scotsman and Velvet Lounge, as they were an excelent partner in our last pro bono venture, Sounds for Sudan (which I had only a little to do with).
All proceeds will be divided amongst a number of agencies working on tsunami-effected areas including Red Cross and Sewalanka (a Sri Lankan NGO). We are yet to decide on the full list of recipients. I am also planning a film night fundraiser at the Luna from which all proceeds will go to the same agencies.
To date, three acts are confirmed: two for the Velvet Lounge - Micadelic and DJ KL, and one for the Scotsman - Voyager. In addition, I am awaiting confirmation from The Funk Club House Band (for the Velvet Lounge) and one of Felix Jeppe's projects - possibly The McCarburetors, possibly The Salt Flats Trio. Unfortunately The Panics are unavailable as they will be on tour at the time. I am going to call Cheeky regarding Downsyde, and will no doubt have to discuss the matter with Paul Sloan at some stage.
As you may have gathered, the plan is for funk, hip hop and decks to operate in the Velvet lounge while varieties of the rock music operate in the Scotsman. My thinking is five acts in each area.
We will be doing radio promos on 107fm and RTR (at least), issuing press releases to The West, Sunday Times and all metropolitan community newspapers. There will also be some postering madness all over metro WA once most of the details are confirmed.
If any of you Westsiders want to help, contact me, Narges Razavi, Debbie Guest or Sunili Govinnage. (Just in case you know one of them and don't know or don't like me). We'll need people for postering teams, door work, band contacts, media contacts, promo ideas etc etc
FOR THE RECORD:
Narges Razavi and I set up 'Cooking With Gas' in March, 2004, when we ran Bands for Bam - a gig that raised $2040 for the Red Cross Bam earthquake appeal. Since then we've done Cargo for Congo (July '04) and Sounds for Sudan (October '04). We've raised almost $5000 for causes including Red Cross and Amnesty International. All bands and all people working on Cooking With Gas events are volunteers.
And this, my friends, is Boxing Day in the Wild West.
The easy bit is over, tomorrow morning I will catch a bus north, then hitch through Port Augusta, Ceduna, across the Nullabor to Norseman, Coolgardie and Perth. My deadline is 12 noon Christmas Day which gives me about 48 hours to cover 3000km, an unlikely equation but this is the one time of year when it can happen… lots of cars on the road, people driving interstate to see family and everyone full of Christmas cheer.
I have no doubt that I will make it on time but it is going to be hard. Hard because it is going to be stinking hot. Hard because I don't like my chances of finding a place to sleep once I'm out there. Hard because mobile range will most definitely drop out and cambot will be idle from time to time. Hard because I have already blown my budget of $100 and run the risk of going over the absolute maximum, $210 ($210 is the cost of a plane ticket from Melbourne to Perth). Hard because South Australia has been strangely kind to me and I fear that it is saving the weird shit till the end… I'll keep you posted.
