Tag: 1993

Beyond 2000: When “Accidents” Happen

…no play when away.

(last updated: 20 November 2024)

The first dog we bought Coco (a Border Collie for $200) died at a few months old after she ate snail poison in the garden.

My mum had a discussion with the gardener in the morning before driving to school, but the poison was laid nevertheless. The gardener, Vince (who has since passed himself) said that he’d never had a problem with that snail poison in other homes. After the death, I recall Vince showing me the box that said “pet-safe” on it or something like that.

So when we arrived home from school we called out for Coco but she never ran up to greet us at the gate with her happy self. The dog was actually lying near the gate to greet us (see red below,) but she had sadly passed by that stage.

I never saw Coco dead – my mum did – and the gardener was fired, but I am still in contact with the gardener’s son who is a gardener himself and remembers the story. I later saw the bright blue snail poison squashed into the bricks of the garden path (see blue above.) I think Coco had removed the pellets from the dirt to eat or test out. It was really sad but we vowed to get another dog soon.

Our next dog, Socks was returned after a week due to him being too placid. He turned into a champion show dog.

After that, we ended up with Toby who was one of the last to go due to a wonky ear. He ended up super intelligent and we taught him heaps of tricks. Really I think all owners of working dogs should be training them as much as they can, especially if they are out of their natural environment.

Toby was once taken from outside Fuji restaurant where we were eating (with Miriam as standing above) and kept for a few weeks by some type of dog-napper who didn’t bother to check the engraved collar.

[pic]

We searched and searched and never found him. We stuck up posters too. One day we got a call and salvaged him. He seemed contented. The woman who took him thought he had been abandoned because he wasn’t tied up. It could have been far worse.

He used to lick windows, perhaps she would’ve kept him otherwise?

Interestingly, later on, that restaurant ended up abandoned for what could’ve been around 20 years.

Eventually Toby could go to Como park by himself and run around at Thursday night football training and then walk home. He could even cross roads by himself if he had the chance. We avoided all that, though.

He liked to chase buses, from the perimeter of the park on the grass, but never running onto the road.

As mentioned, I made a short film with him and it was shown to the students of VCE Media units 1+2 (for Year 10) – Karen may remember, she was one of the teachers at the time. But that video is no more. However, I did record a short clip of Desmond in 2007, the sequel dog to Toby:

Slim Dusty - Duncan (featuring Desmond - Blue Healer)

Like many dogs, Desmond had a degree of separation anxiety and unless tied up, could follow me into shops – even supermarket aisles. Yet he had more style than most. With Toby, this wasn’t a problem because we followed the breeder’s advice and let him welp into the night while he was meant to go to sleep in the laundry as a very young puppy – he was left alone. And being more independently minded, it was easy to make a short film with Toby. Then again, it was never a concern for Des to run away.

Des handled puppy school with ease – so much so that he was offered multiple scholarships at various Ivy League schools, which he turned down in favour for eventual professorship at Harvard apparently – but he never told us directly.

Toby rejected the idea of puppy school altogether and even death, favouring the notion of transcending the Earthly realm and merging with an 8th density consciousness.

Back on a serious note, in a related story, in the early 2000s, I was housesitting for someone in my family and also pet-minding.

As I enjoyed the view, and watched an EWF DVD, for a few days I also saw Rozy (the Cocker Spaniel) rolling around on her neck and scratching her head.

Earth Wind & Fire - System of Survival • Get Away [Live in Japan 1990]

I ignored her until one day I saw her attempting to push off her collar in the front garden (below right.) She was actually positioning herself so that I could see her doing it as her system of survival.

I took a closer look and there was a rubber band around her neck hidden amongst her hair and below the other collar.

The rubber band had caused a deep gash in some parts of her neck and there was blood and pus. I took it off and applied antiseptic. I also cut off some of the hair around her neck. She survived and recovered without me needing to go to a vet, but had it remained it could’ve been far worse.

I remember the neighbour a few days earlier coming over and playing with the dog. There was no one watching him – I just let him do his thing and I didn’t know him – I am pretty sure he came over especially to play with the dog.

Was it malicious – did he want to hurt the dog, the family or even me in the process? (I would’ve got the blame) Did he arrive with a rubber band in his pocket? He also had a younger brother, and it may have been him instead but I doubt it. The rubber band may have also been around the dog’s neck before he arrived by one of the children – carelessly – but I knew nothing of it.

Eden once came over while I was house-sitting, and I also met up with Mark (not from Wesley) who was working in the city at the time. Interestingly, there was a police street-homicide in between that residence and the neighbour’s residence in the 80s.

Anyway, I told the family what happened when they returned and they sort of brushed it off because Rozy was almost completely healed. I don’t even know if they ever followed it up. Perhaps I should’ve taken some photos. I never saw the neighbour again – that family moved out.


✓ 9 months ago

If nothing else, free the Left Hand!

Independence can be a way of life too.

(last updated: 4 July 2025)

[Summer – Rainbow beach]

After starting drums in 1991 with teacher Andrew Smith, right after quitting many years of piano lessons, I played in the awesome Wesley Big Band from mid-1994 until early 1996 when I left due to time pressures. Big Band people also had to play in the Concert Band as a rule.

Also, in 1994, my mum bought a:

  • Yamaha Vinnie Colaiuta 14×4.5″ signature snare
  • Paiste 15″ signature fast crash
  • Paiste 13″ signature sound edge hi-hats
  • Zildjian 17″ K dark medium-thin crash

from Manny’s Music in NYC that were all shipped back to Melbourne. Bar Mitzvah money put to good use.  Yet I ended up selling them all except the snare which I play to this day (2025.)

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The Paiste crash was incredible but the hats were awful. It was a punt – the gear was selected from reading magazines. Even my Pearl Masters kit in 1995 was selected by magazines.

I ended up with two tom-toms of the same depth and only a 2″ difference in diameter just like Vinnie’s:

[ src – purchased: red ]

Yet, I think this was a great result as the 10″ power tom sounds reasonably different to the 12″ standard tom and the difference is easy on the ear. Both the guy at the shop and my drum teacher were unnerved with the sizings – was the 16″ x 20″ bass drum really too large for jazz and too small for a rock show?

[ 27 May 2022 ]

Surely, it can be tuned up or down? Yet, decades later, the 14″ floor tom and bass drum have ended up complimenting the 2015 stand-mounted Jinbao bass-drum.

[drums switcheroo + first play] Dirty Diana (1987 + 2020)

I also had a Sabian 20″ HH medium-thin ride (below left) carried over from a few years earlier which was eventually replaced by a 20″ K Heavy.

So I used this gear in the school band competition and we won equal-first (below-left.)

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In November 2018 I remember going into a drum store and trying out the cymbals and realizing within a couple of strokes whether I liked the sound or not, but back then I didn’t really know what I wanted or what I liked.

Get to Sticks (1992 + 2018)

It’s the same with fashion – one look and it’s either on or it’s not – although it was never like that growing up.

In Big Band, Simon played drums before me and set a really “nasty” precedent for me to follow after himself and a number of members left after the band’s Montreux performance in mid-1994. I also saw him play at a Battle of the Bands at the Lauriston Fair and he would’ve been best off playing under Maurice White than anyone else.

I played in the 1997 BotB and ended up dropping a stick after cramping up, and it was a shameful moment for me… wow, that had never happened before. We’d rehearsed at my house too and I was doing a lot of the schlepping and all the carrying of amps took its toll. It was for first-time rockstar vocalist Hezza and in front of a lot of girls.

I am pretty sure Simon was playing drums that day in his band Polyester.


[same school, Out Loud in 2014]

It was such a failure on my part, I think I ended up playing with one cramped forearm for two songs (the other arm was incapacitated.) I barely even knew what a cramp was. It’s like “What the fuck is wrong with my arms!?” For Hezza, this was at a time when being on stage with a rock band was the equivalent of having a new IG account with thousands of new followers.

I really should’ve yelled out to the other band members for timeout. “Sorry peeps, the drummer can’t play anymore. Well he never really could to begin with either. Did you hear about the drummer who finished high school? Me neither.”

Hezza had such high hopes and it all ended up a train wreck of emotion. I saw him years later in the city at night with his friend and things weren’t the same. We were once such jovial pals.

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Trumpeter Ollie T along with Ben, James and Zoe (all above) were playing with me in Ska band Skaface at the time (1996.) Bas and Eden also played in it and there should be a recording from Bakehouse studios floating around somewhere.

I left Big Band in Yr 12, because it was taking too much time – really it was the setting up and packing away of the drums at rehearsals twice weekly which was the deal-breaker. I may have also had fatigue issues regardless because I quit Karate in 1996 too. Jewish Big Band drummer Buddy Rich also did Karate from 48 onward, but looking at his hunch, I think he would’ve been better off with Yoga. And with Big Band a thing of the past, so was Concert Band and I must’ve freed up about 8 hours of my week.

If I am to look back with complete honesty, I suspect my health took a hit from vxccines taken for an 89/90 trip to India – Hep A, Hep B (x 3) and Meningitis.

[ above right – all shot-up with Mr Patel in Ahmedabad at his quarry that he repopulated with wildlife after its end-of-life. In that social group, I talked science with someone. 7 years later, high school physics was my best result. Magic. ]

[ A year or two later: Mr Patel again with Satyajeet (with dogs) (Darbar Shri Satyajeet kumar Shivraj khachar of Jasdan) for his royal arranged marriage. ]

I think Patel was an engineer and I met Satyajeet very, very briefly. My grandfather Oskar knew Shivraj – Satyajeet’s father.

And today new borns are given Hepatitis B shots – all ready for a trip to India!?

So that toxicity was seemingly rectified about 12 years later due to an “energetic-cleansing” type experience.

Also, I had received 4 very large mercury/amalgam fillings from a young age and those off-gassing could’ve also caused problems. Another problem could have been the fluorescent desk lamp (near Hendrix poster, pic further down.) I’ve heard someone say that the lamps dislodge mercury in the body, and of course contain a small amount of it too.

So it’s worth noting that Pranic healing deals with healing on the subtle level before it manifests in the physical hence the expression “real-eyes realize real-lies.” Autobiography of a Yogi spoke about this.

I am not so won over by vxccines because:

  • Weren’t these nasty diseases on their way out anyway due to advances in hygiene? (the Big Kahuna question)
  • Do they actually work?
  • Are they really needed?
  • Why don’t all unvaccinated children drop dead before age 30?
  • Who’s funding the studies?
  • Are there liability exemptions?
  • Is there a profit-motive somewhere?
  • What’s the track record of governments working against the governed?
  • Are they part of binary weapons systems, eg cell-phone towers, body scanners, smart meters?
  • Are there other alterior motives?
  • Have they been mis-named (just like Israel)?
  • Is there full transparency in the production process?
  • On a purely physical level, aren’t nanometals and synthetic biology the enemies of health? Do vaccines add to that?
  • With heavy metals, one can expect parasites to co-exist with them, right? And with that comes biofilms, sludge and brain fog.

Vxccines are no substitute to raising the vibration and that can come through relaxation and flow-states. That’s fine, but what if it takes monthly colon hydrotherapy, lymphatic drainage and ozone sessions to get to that point? Medical students don’t even write a single essay in 5/6 years of study. Only short-answers. After that, they’re worked to the ground so they don’t or can’t think critically. The overwork/underpayment culture is done purposely to remove undesirable mindsets from the system. What am I missing? Probabaly a lot.

Was the late Susan Wojcicki targetted due to c19/vxccine censorship?

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If so, it’s strange to see a “bottom-up” hit – usually it’s done to the small guy for going against the prevailing winds of the industry associations and their consensus before they get traction. As Buddy Rich said:

“I used to think of myself as a tough guy. Looking back now, I wonder what’s so great about being a tough guy.” – src

So I may well have gotten fatigue, but at least I wasn’t paralyzed. I think the fatigue started to happen when more cell phone towers went up later into the 90’s and my learning ability was also hampered – but I had so much to spare, it wasn’t really noticeable from the exterior. But it may have had something to do with my amalgam fillings.

It may be worth noting that at about 6 years old in primary school, myself and all my classmates had to provide cheek swabs for some woman that came through the school. I didn’t mind – I was thrilled that she wasn’t giving us all injections.

We were also IQ-tested a year or two later, and then tested again for the propensity to disassociate as mentioned here.

Sports day was so much more straightforward, even in black shoes.

[ mid-80s, KDS, original Kooyong Rd campus | 2022 ]

Looking back, perhaps having my DNA stored somewhere unbeknownst to me was/is just as dangerous as being turned over to a possible mind-control/transgendering process to serve the beast system. Or is there a clone of me somewhere from whom I can extract something later in life?

So a human clone planet is mentioned in Ormus King 2:

and intergalactic assasinations and human replacements in Ormus King 7 whereby “humans are controlled and dominated from a far-off planet for their eventual replacement by a reptilian alien cult that hijack Earth’s technology systems.”

[March, 2021]

Anyway, there was another recording with myself, Zev, Eden and Matho done at Metropolis that I wish I still had from 1996. We got free recording time and Zev and Eden came up with a track on the spot that day. I think it was called Debowana …give me some water… It sounded a lot like Big Mistake from 1997.

Natalie Imbruglia - Big Mistake Live on Channel 5 UK

We also did a cover of Fire. I ended up giving the caseette tape to Matho at a house party one night. I should’ve given it to a venue – that really was a big mistake yet he would’ve been out of the country for the next year or two anyway so that would’ve been of no consequence. Matho wasn’t even a trained singer but sounded great. I don’t think his heart was in it.

The whole session was done to help audio engineering students and my brother put me onto “Goldsmith” who was looking for a band.

It took 3 phone calls to initially reach Matho, and that would be my 2nd last. Matho knew deep down that he wouldn’t see past his 27th birthday if anything came of the band and just wanted to dodge a bullet. Well I highly, highly doubt that… maybe me though?

So I did vaguely know one fellow Harry who died at 27 who has IG embeds on this blog.

[alike]

He may well have been following this blog leading up to his death, not sure, and none of those names above are on my FB or YT followers lists – are they super-fans or beast-system-leeches? It’s God or the devil, baby!

ANTIBOY - Devil (Official Video)

Harry had some really good insights to share, and it was/is so sad to see him leave so soon although I recently read an interesting quote: “Death is but a horizon, and a horizon is just a limitation of our view.”

He passed away at dwelling purposely setup by his family for detoxing, which is sad but I don’t know the finer details. In any case, still a great loss. His last tweet was so positive.

So back to Metropolis, not sure how happy Eden was playing bass, and Zev might’ve been wanting to sing too. Goldsmith loved the music. The biggest “close but no cigar ” moment ever.

I couldn’t think of a name for the band. Spartacus came up with “Interstellar Overdrive” for another band that had Eden in it. A year later and things may have worked out as long as we owned our masters and I would’ve been able to get a website (with MP3s) and email list going pretty quickly – even in 1997. I probably would’ve ended up hiring a drummer and played percussion or done drum programming. Maybe Zev and Eden wanted to be writing for their own groups.

So back at school, I got along well with the conductor, the late Mr Lee (not everyone did) and he was also the music school head.

[ src ]

Lee sold musical instruments to students so that was pretty shrewd of him to leverage his position like that.

He played alto sax and I once lent him my Sinatra at the Sands CD that I purchased from Greville Records but I never saw it again – perhaps it flew away! In fact, the shop was up the road from my school and in uniform, I asked the shopkeeper (owner too?) what the best big band CD was and he gave me that one. I also asked for a funk tip and he gave me Curtis.

Curtis Mayfield - Curtis -1970 -FULL ALBUM

He was impressed – so was I!

Then ~10 years later I was back there with Mr Petrie asking him if he wanted to sign up to Moshtix. He was more nervous than anything, but I wasn’t! He was like “come back to me last.” He wasn’t in the ticketing business, it was a complimentary good (like the Moshcard) and it brought new people into the store.

[ src ]

Petrie was really excited about this swipe card for venue entry – he envisaged it becoming a discount and customizable card for the younger generation – many of whom didn’t even have credit cards. People could’ve been sent MP3s after buying a ticket or had a collection of music attached to it.

Facebook turned down their initial acquisition offer from Yahoo in 2006, and I think Moshtix could’ve pushed off News Corp too. That’s easy to say looking back, and I wasn’t in contact with Petrie in 2008, but the word “Mosh” limited the ticketing scope to music, right? I know there was a cinema using the site at the time.

Wherever there is power, money easily follows, and the power is at the enabling interface between disparate groups or systems that need/use each other. So much money at the interface between yarn and skin. If I owned a newspaper, I’d look at buying a timber plantation, paper plant and a recycling business – keiretsu. If American companies merged with each other, they wouldn’t need such high tariffs, right? I have no idea.

I am not sure if Greville Records were one of Moshtix’s early retail sign-ons where people could buy a ticket and add it to their Moshcard. By mid-2005 Moshtix hadn’t listed their Melbourne outlets online:

src

Greville Records were with OzTix by 2008, though:

src

But I remember seeing GR on Moshtix at one point. Or did I? Weird. Maybe they switched over to OzTix after the 2007 Moshtix acquisition and didn’t want to associate with Big Business. Perhaps Greville Records gave the ticketer a “cool factor” that lead to greater success in Melbourne, after Sydney, and leading to the rest of Australia as a result. I have no idea.

[ Note Hendrix poster bottom left – from Greville Records ]

By mid-2005, three Melbourne venues already signed-on to use Moshtix were Bennetts Lane, The Corner and The Metro. We met those on-site and a bunch more including HiFi Bar where I came face-to-face again with Kiran (not Haslam) who I hadn’t seen since the school Big Band where he had sung. Petrie was in the dark about Melbourne’s music scene. How much did he like music? Did it really matter anyway? Kiran ended up building out HiFi’s own ticketing system but I’d have to double-check on it.
Getting Metro on board was a big win after Mr Petrie and I initially met Alistair and Anna at the venue in early 2004.

src | 2

@dannysrants Do you remember Metro Nightclub? #nightclubs #nightclub #melbourne #nightlife #clubbing #promoter #security #clubs #metro #nostalgic #throwback #rememberwhen ♬ original sound – DannyRants

Alistair, at the opposite end of a large table was like: “who’s liable if the system breaks down on the night.”
Hamish was like: “it’s never failed yet.”
Alistair: “well what happens if it does?”
Hamish: “uhmm, yes…. well…”

[ 2003 ]

It was a raw meeting as we ran through the contract and no one had even yet been short-changed. Anna in the side-office was like: “if you really want to sell a lot of tickets you either need a great act or the cool-crowd present.” Nailed it. They might’ve thought we were uncool. But when I was 13 in the early 90’s, a bunch of us had free entry into TIME underage on Saturdays there at Metro. Someone thought we were cool.

The music could be really upfront, as social media was absent and people were wanting to get accelerated attraction with “randoms.” Little by way of cyber-checkin’.

Well, that’s one theory I read anyway. Also, is it just me or did people actually look physically different back then, like DNA was of a different quality? Less autism too. My brother had a Q-Bar medallion around a decade later… so roll up anytime and then straight in.

[ 2001? ] [ src ]

But Bennetts Lane was the first sign-on, and they got on board pretty soon after the first meeting using their new “tickets direct” page and the chap told us the frequent ticket queues stretching down the lane were a real problem and that’s why he wanted to sign up so badly.

src

Who said jazz heads were stuck in the past? More like stuck in a lane!

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In the end, friendships, commission, equity or a wage, nothing really eventuated from Moshtix. Yet due to my newly acquired hearing issues, I think it would’ve been a nightmare getting into the live music scene during 2004 and beyond. Imagine troubleshooting a swipe reader or being invited to late-night drinks and wanting to leave after 1 minute. Free the legs. At least all my Groovetip work paid off… for others! I’d have to settle with karma points and a good story! The whole “kiss up, kick down” mentality and vying to become an apex predator ultimately never works in a co-operative universe.

Mr Petrie went on to build Taxi-app ingogo, but from my understanding was ejected by the investors 7.5 years in, and the app has since shut down without an exit. We had some good conversations and he was talking about taxis and standing desks even back in Sydney.

Real Life - Send Me An Angel '89

Anyway, Sonny Payne – killer drummer. “He was Frank Sinatra’s personal drummer for all of the singer’s live appearances with Count Basie and his big band in 1964 and 1965 and 1966; in fact, whenever Sinatra sang with Basie in the 1960s, Payne was the drummer.” – src

A band is never better than its drummer and Frank knew it.

Frank Sinatra - Luck Be A Lady

The Chairman of the Board backed-up by the drummer. Interestingly, Andrew left me a heap of jazz records and I still have them to this day.

But reading the Mile Davis autobiography during that time – great read – really helped me put Jazz into perspective.

Following on from this, it wasn’t really that cool to be in a Big Band and the drumming is quite challenging – anticipating all the band lines. And in the Big Band, I never really dialled into the importance of “double-stroke roll triplets” until many years later – crucial for jazz playing. It’s a type of poly-rhythm that can really empower a drummer to put all their rudiments into a triplet feel. And that’s what life is all about – seeing the normal things through new lenses!

Also, the “Rock and Roll” style is about switching from straight-ahead grooves to these triplet fills. Going from rock to roll. Think Bonham.

I play a triplet at 45 secs:

[switcheroo drums] Bon Jovi - Blaze of Glory (1990 + 2020)

School uniforms aside, Angus Young has said he even likes the beats slightly swung, not just the fills.

So around 1996 I saw Julian Joseph at The Continental Cafe in Greville Street with Charlie (see below.) After the show, the drummer Mark told me that to be a good funk player it really helps to be a good jazz player in order to free up the left hand.

Mark Mondesir Drum Lessons: You only need 7 Rudiments!! - Heavy Groovin! #drummerworld

My goal is to have it to the point where it almost needs to be attached with a leash!

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

related:

Fretless bass player Charlie on the right:

pics
palette.fm
www.vinniecolaiuta.com/Interviews/ModernDrummer1993
✓ 2 months ago

Silverchair and Arkana – Tomorated (2022)
– mashup

Retrofuturism: “In the past, there was a vision of the future. In the future, there’s a vision of the past. And strangely, tragically, beautifully, that’s all they were… vision. The past and the future were both looking at the world they wanted, but never received. Little did we know, there was only the present.” ~ unknown

 

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✓ 3 years ago

1993: Shorn Right!

Bad hair days be damned and seeking other solutions!

(updated: 16 February 2025)

[ Light Blue, issue 113, Feb 2024, p8-9 ]

I was never sure what to do about my hair when I arrived at Timbertop. I liked my hair but wanted something lower maintenance so decided to get a “blade 2.”

In my hike group, “Lozenge” (below middle, black t-shirt) took the photo above left and ended up getting a blade 1, I think a couple of weeks after me. It was insane.

But both our hair grew back by term 4 to the point where I was asked to get it cut.

I still can’t wrap my head around how Owen Wilson (above, yellow T-shirt) ended up in the group without anyone batting an eyelid. Or was it his twin/doppelganger?

Whatever we did, it worked and I picked up equal first in the photo competition (with Sight Regained t-shirt) at the end of Term 1.

Also, our hike group of 6 people picked up 3rd place at the hiking awards for the distance we traveled at the end of the year with our group leader (above, Dolphins cap) receiving a free jacket. In that group, to the best of my knowledge, I did most of the navigation, sometimes with Lozenge. I was the designated navigator, was I not? Yet roles weren’t really important. I had already been navigating at Mount Buller with the ski map for many years prior, so it wasn’t hard for me.

So “Dolph” chimed in sometimes yet maybe he was navigating too, but was less vocal about it. Same with “The Big Dipper” (wearing glasses.) We very rarely got lost or needed to do a triangulation. If lost, the idea is to just stop and retrace steps and with good visibility, that’s pretty easy. I think the key is to always be working with the map and land simultaneously as much as possible by merging the two within the mind. That leaves the others to crack jokes and think about water. I think we aimed for ~30kms per day in pre-planning but also took into account terrain to obtain a time target instead of distance one.

Maybe the secret to our “success” was that 4 of the guys were all from the same unit, so had more cohesion. I also knew Lozenge from before Timbertop. In the long-runs, I was usually coming in 18-25th place – I think the best from our group. Maybe Lozenge did better on a couple of occasions. None of us were laggards. The most difficult groups are ones where there is a super-fast person with a super-slow person. Also, we were good with setup and takedowns of camp – that can really be a time sink.

D’s group scored first place – they all got jackets and a girl’s group led by a Japanese girl came in second. I think that was the case.

Getting a blade 2 before anyone else was the tough thing to do and a lot of people were checking it out.

  • pic 2,3,4 – unit master and science teacher S.
  • pic 5,6 –  “Passover or Passout?” with M and FT, 5 April 1993. [pic 5 was also in the school magazine with a description]

M’s not technically Jewish and it was very gracious of him to attend. More could be said about the passover but I’d have to double check with a few others first.

Speaking of which, I met W at Timbertop and he lived near me and we actually hung out a few times in the subsequent years. I hope he’s doing well. The last time I saw him was in late 1999 when I encountered him at the end of Huntingfield Road by chance with PJ (I am pretty sure that that is what occurred.)

Looking back at my life, I’ve missed so many formal occasions, I can only see it as character-building and a means of differentiation – Rites of Passage or Rites of Destruction? Religion divides as much as it unifies in this day and age. And for some, a Jewish guy married to a gentile is not even seen as married at all and that the wife could/should convert. As such, I’m not doing too badly. It’s also impossible to convert to another religion – you’re just confused.

There’s no map to the promised land – for me at least. Does one swim upstream or downstream? Is there even a choice? And I met a religious guy in Israel that aimed to do away with all the mitzvot and just attain the wisdom behind their underlying sefirot – a different kind of observance – but even that knowledge has been corrupted I suspect. Some people think that this life is all about attaining rebirth in the World-To-Come. Beam me up, Scotty!

Anyway, so my haircut was also a rebellion from my younger years when I refused to even get a haircut.

[Tasmania – first plane trip away from Melbourne]

With the curls, random women would come up and tell me how much they loved my hair and I would say that I hated it – probably due to the compliments but I still didn’t want to get a cut: I thought it would hurt! Something like that attention then happened at school but due to the lack of hair.

Due to the attention, after the blade 2, and until it grew out a bit, I covered my head with a beanie and picked up the nickname “Champ” in the process. That was from big ‘G’ who had just tried it on and was with R at the time.

— pic 2,3 – Bluff Hut for unit campout

It was actually a really empowering nickname – I kind of had to live up to it. I’m not sure many girls used it. And there was another Champ there at the time who was Thai and that was his real name but I don’t think we ever spoke.

G and R both got really short haircuts some time later (when visible underneath their cowboy hats) and perhaps the nickname came about more from their admiration of the cut, than of me. G played drums too. I was relieved people weren’t calling me AIDS like some had 5 years prior – alongside a few calling me ‘Einstein’ such as J. Only G knew what AIDS stood for backwards. I heard him reveal it one night in the San(atorium) in passing conversation. Shocking stuff.

The Champion brand was unknown to Australia at the time and my mum brought it back from Chicago a couple of years earlier. The shop had said that it was the hottest brand at the time. K-Ci can be seen below wearing it on stage in New York in 1991 (vid here.)

In the 1980’s I used to listen to American Top 40 (Casey Kasem) on the radio, and so got a headstart on what was going to be coming down the pipe from the USA ahead of time. Here he is announcing Huey Lewis as #1 in October, 1986. But if you mentioned 80’s music in 1993, people would think something was seriously wrong with you.

“J” took the photo below with my camera and has since become a professional portrait photographer.

I ended up leaving Geelong Grammar as my plan was always to do the International Baccalaureate there, but it was shorn out of the syllabus.

What did I expect?

But I never ended up doing IB anyway due to poor French performance, and I did do VCE Media (1+2) in Year 10 which was new at the time. A few other people ended up at Wesley like PJ and a few girls. I had trouble sleeping in a roomful of people… those damn sleepwalkers – maybe that was it. But hey, I snored sometimes. So on many a night I was the last person to “depart” so I departed myself.

Going back to board – all aboard!

[ 1993 – waiting to get onboard the bus at Spencer Street station with M who I knew from my earlier Glamorgan stint whereby I came into the school already knowing good people. ]

[ 1988 –  arrive at school early enough and there’d be tons of guys on the tennis court playing an elimination game – a few girls but not many. Another chap W also went to the same school from down the street and he rode there too. ]

Quality of sleep is something I should discuss at a later point as I had nightmares for many years starting in the early-mid-2000s I think. But not really anymore. There were also dreams of euphoria, and then various combinations of the two as the mind-body complex healed and purified from the soul outward. Healed from what, though?

  1. Original sin?
  2. Nanotechnology infiltration with a biblical past?
  3. Individual or collective pain-body?
  4. Unfulfilled Jungian archetypes?
  5. Not resonating with past lives and the soul’s journey?

…with those perspectives being in response to a foreign yet innate self-regulating process contained within my perception. Opening up the hurt-locker for a spring clean.

In our unit in 1993, G was very apt at hitting the snooze button and he did it a lot, and he also ended up school captain a few years later.

[ G – far right checker shirt + red t-shirt, further up, behind wheelbarrow. “S” above with the broom who G really helped out and S picked up an endeavour award that year.]

These days I prefer to see myself as waking-up more than anything else, and creating my own version of “woke,” if it’s possible. The beauty of life is that any type of meaning can be attached to it, it seems, but for how long remains in question. But I am always happy to laugh at how seriously I take myself.


✓ 6 months ago

Reon Vangèr – healing (2022)

 

throwback:

 

alike:

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compositioninredblueandyellow.art
palette.fm
✓ 3 years ago

1994: Toby is Dead. Long live Toby.

I never saw him in his final days but I did get a last good-bye.

(last updated: 7 March 2025)

In 1994, I made the film “Toby is dead” with our Border Collie for media class and it was shown to the class for inspiration.

I used all the tricks he knew and completed the film without editing as a string of one-shot takes where he walks around Como park, swims in the Yarra River, crosses the road, passes a beer bottle and cruises around until he finally makes it home to be greeted by my mum at the end of the hallway!

While that film is now lost, there is a short snippet of Toby here (at 0.13) that I filmed in 1989:

"I wanna kissy... " (1989)

Toby did die within a year when we were on a trip to Bali in early 1995.

I must’ve had a premonition about it as he looked to be slowing down and seemed more tired, and that’s why I called the film ‘Toby is Dead.’ But perhaps I was mentally preparing for him dying, due to my memory of Cocoa. He was in the same litter.

In Bali, he was being looked after by my grandparents by the sea and he was sick when we left him.

"Is there something wrong with Toby" [1995]

So it was a bittersweet holiday, that’s for sure, with the regular phone updates from my grandfather.

Prior to us leaving, we thought he would recover. The diagnosis was vague.

Like with Desmond…

[ 2000 ] [ 2001? ]

…I never saw him in his final hours. Perhaps he would have wanted it that way.

However, the local vet kept the corpse and after arriving home from Bali, Toby M (the musician, not the dog) and I dug a grave for him in the front garden behind the fence. The vet came over and put the corpse into the grave and the pair covered him in lime. (see T below)

At that moment, I was waiting near the house because I didn’t want to see the dead body due to my distress. When the vet left, Toby M and I filled the grave. The vet said he probably had stomach cancer and at the time we put it down to him drinking Yarra River water when he went for a swim as he splashed around. He looked to be snapping away at the splashes he made.

And Last Good-bye came out around that time too. But it never made it onto the soundtrack.

Jeff Buckley - Last Goodbye | 120 Minutes | MTV | New York | 1/10/1995

Maybe Toby heard the song too.
✓ 1 month ago

1992: Spellbound from take to mistake!

The body soon knows where the nose goes!

(updated: 16 February 2025)

Timbertop next year (early 90's - Sep + Feb)

* In the video above, I mention using my brother Luke’s stereo and bike accessories (tyre pump) after he left for boarding school.

That clip was shot in February ’92 and when he returned for term 1 holidays, I admitted to using his stereo and other stuff. It was just a casual conversation we had. Sharing is caring, right?

My mother was somewhat okay with me doing so, but only under certain conditions.

He also used some of my stuff in the following year. We ultimately shared our stuff… within reasonable limits under the constraints of the time.

Also, from 1989 onward we used to share a number of things including a single 8088 XT clone for school work and gaming. Luke had the computer in his room for a while (so I was in there a bit) until it was moved into the family room, and it was often a source for conflict or disagreement.

[ colorized ]

Who knows, maybe it caused my visual short-sightedness (I got glasses in 1994) and derailed my handwriting but I was handing in printed assignments at school before anyone else and topped the class consistently, except for Hebrew.

So in around 1990, my mum was kind enough to bring home a pair of Bauer rollerblades from the USA (around a decade after giving birth to me.)

Then by 1992, Bar Mitzvah = gifts = much unused clutter.

1 2 ..

At the end of that year, I broke my nose snowboarding in France and I had only just started out shredding

[Buller, 1992]

And before that, Jeremy had initially lent me his board – an early Burton.

That was a year or two earlier and the boots weren’t great – I think they were rentals, though.

 

So I didn’t find snowboarding easy, but it was fresh and fun. So I ended up with a bump, like so many others.

[ Courchevel, early 1993 ]

Like being in Luke’s room, maybe I shouldn’t have ever ventured onto that steep run. I think it was Face de Bellevarde (Val-d’Isère) the Olympic downhill run and it was so foggy that day that I never intended to board there. Also, I lost my way and ended up tumbling over some rocks on the the side of the run at the bottom section. It really hurt.

Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. Unless you’re nosy.

It was a week or two after the pics below.

1 2

So my grandfather once told me he broke his nose, I think during the war, and he just used his bare hands to snap it back into place. There were no doctors around. He laughed about it.

But for me, I didn’t think of that. When I told my mum a few days later she suggested seeing a doctor. But I didn’t want an operation, and if I could still breathe through it, and it looked okay, I’d be fine. Yet perhaps the doctor could’ve manually reset it like with Fred. That’s possible if done within a week of breakage – but they could also wreck it more. Interestingly, I recently learned that mouth-breathing is actually risky to dental health, as it disrupts the oral microbiome.

“France is not really herself unless she is in the front rank,” wrote de Gaulle at the start of his war memoirs The Call to Honor. Only the French ?!?

As with de Gaulle, Freddy too also fought in the French resistance, whereby some fighters helped him cross the Pyrenees on his escape to Barcelona from Toulouse where he learned Spanish. I don’t think he handled a gun and am not sure how long he was with the group, though. I think he said his nose was broken in a battle – not sure. So he left in January, 1944. His younger brother (Jacques,) sister (Lily) and mother (Manya) followed in July with the help of “passeurs.” It took them 4 days and nights to make the trip over the Pyrenees to rendezvous with Freddy in Spain (see below.)

As a child, Fred showed me once at Mount Buller how to pierce an egg and drink the contents through it, which the resistance fighters did. Must’ve worked. Interestingly, to this day (Nov 2024) my mother speaks French and Spanish – both very well, as did her father.

Anyway, prior to the ’92 trip, I had also skied in France in 85/86.

With ski instructor Lionel at Club Med, Tignes Val Claret, for a 2-star award… great teacher and person.

So I had two other risky falls that trip while skiing in early 1993.

On the first day, I took a minor fall but a single ski catapulted almost to the height of the chairlift and almost landed on my head. I didn’t see any of it, but that’s what I was told. Some time later, I took a fall and ended up sliding down a steep run (in Val Thorens?) with only one ski attached, but picking up speed.

People on the chair were shouting at me but I didn’t know what they were saying. I managed to break my slide by doing some kind of self-arrest with the poles. Later from the chair I saw I would’ve dropped and slammed really hard into a traverse track had I kept going, maybe over the edge of a cliff.

Around this time, Rikka’s father saw me fall at the bottom of Bull Run chair amongst the moguls, when he stood there and said “Nice Stack” in a French accent. At least he was honest.

I had taken big falls on race courses too, unwilling or unable to ride the big ruts when they emerged in the fog.

[ 1993 ? – Shakey Knees, Mount Buller ]

Yet, I had been skiing since I was two so how could I overcome the discontent?

Maybe the equipment was the problem. Why carry poles if they were never even planted? I wasn’t using poles while rollerblading. My uncle once suggested to wear weighted gloves as an experiment. But in the end, the ‘right’ technique was dictated by the ski shape – yet that wasn’t enabling me to become the endorphin machine I know was possible.

1994 05 05 Endorphinmachine

So a little over a decade later in 2002, I did an introductory ski instructor’s course at Mount Buller, but didn’t end up teaching. A good thing as ski schools have very clear ideas of what’s right and wrong regarding technique. Yet so did I. I have the certificate somewhere.

That year I had started to Heartcarve in New Zealand (Mt Ruapehu) on some of the earlier parabolic skis and basically never fell from then onward as a result of my quiet revolution in style.

[ Salt Lake City + Snowbird – March 2003 ]

So skiing then became a sport about endorphins for me rather than adrenaline and that became possible due to my rollerblading practice and analysing the planes of Heart-motion, which I ended up describing in an article in 2008.

[ diagram ~2003 | March 2008 ]

And people on the Newschoolers site wondered if I was serious or not.

There are actually 6 separate carving styles within these planes. This deconstruction and re-imagining of skiing occurred consciously as I thought about new ways to use the parabolic skis that began arriving in the late 90’s from Elan which I had yet to use. I wanted a way to abstract myself away from the micro-management of movement that can lead to rigid thinking and limit flow-states. As mentioned elsewhere, “if nothing else, free the left-hand,” yet “free the heart” would also be great.

So Heartcarving was enabled by an evolution in ski design.

[ 2007 Buller x 2 | 2008 Whistler ]

And by January 2013 I was fortunate enough to be able to head to Zermatt with a pair of custom skis that I designed in snoCAD-X, were built in France and then sent to me in Jerusalem.

[  2012 Chamonix (Idris) ]

Skis on roof [Jerusalem late 2012]

Just ask Pierre.

"I've never seen skis like that!" [Jan, 2013]

Because who wants to break a leg?

[ Aug, 2017 ]

Furthermore, upon returning I started buying inexpensive crystals from ebay to help continue with this shift to the heart in day-to-day life – well that’s what I believed or wanted.

Heart Rhythm Meditation was something I came across in 1999 – and to me it makes sense to be aware of the heart and lungs simultaneously – along with everything else going on. The idea is to get more exit from the mind and more presence into the body because the body is always present. That’s what St Germain spoke about also in 1999.

"Rhodizite is an amplification stone." #crystal #rhodizite

[July 2014]

Others have said that the heart chakra is the most important one because it keeps the others in balance.

And even though I haven’t skied since 2013, (as of 2024) I feel I am possibly 50 years ahead of my time. Time will tell. And those custom skis ended up warping anyway, so perhaps the delay can mean better materials to construct true super-skis.

To this day, I don’t see why the body can’t naturally restructure itself to its original blueprint. Perhaps it never will whilst under a Witch’s Spell.

AC/DC - Witch's Spell (Official Video)

The original blueprint – can carving take me there?
✓ 6 months ago