Sunny days, at Mike Bailey's trivia fundraiser

Mike Bailey and Senator John Faulkner give me the inside word on the best strip clubs to visit whilst in the US.

Willis and I went down to our local to take part in our first ever political party fundraiser. Mike Bailey - former ABC TV weather man, full-time amateur comedian, and now Labor candidate for the Federal seat of North Sydney - was having a bit of a trivia night.

I've blogged about Mike's race to Canberra before and with an election likely for late November, Mike needs all the support he can get (we're on a first name basis now by the way). There were a heap of people there - 38 tables in fact - a mixture of old stodgy Labor hardcores, and new-wave filthy socialist university arts students. And Willis & I. He's stodgy and I'm in the filthy socialist camp.

Willis and I settled into a few schooners, introducing ourselves to our table - a trivia master, a chemist, a man with anger-management problems, his wife, a super-intelligent woman who thought she was playing 'Fast Money' all night and her unassuming husband who secretly wanted to pants Ricky Ponting.

Highlights include:

• Anger-management constantly putting his wife and others in their place
• Anger-management's wife subsequently getting drunk to deal with her husband's shit
• Anger-management's comments to Willis and I that we needed to start pulling our weight
• Our Latin team name - 'Cogitamus', meaning "we are thinking"
• Our conversation with Senator John Faulkner after the proceedings - he used the words "bastards", "crooks", "criminals" and "the worst kinds of humans" when referring to the current government, then told us encouragingly to "keep up the struggle"
• Finding out that Mike Bailey's son is named Mike Bailey
• Willis adopting the pseudonym 'Ric Biggs', even if only for a short while
• Mid-week beers with Willis, after a particularly difficult day

Our table was extremely competitive, leading for most of the night, only to come second to Table 27 in the final round. At the height of the frustration, two members from my table staged a protest with Senator Faulkner over when the most recent King of England was crowned. Apparently he was announced King in 1936, but was crowned the following year...contentious stuff. Here's a video of the incident:



I've just sent off a friend request to Joe Hockey on Facebook, asking whether he'll be holding any fundraising evenings as part of his campaign. Willis and I will also be looking to attend an event from each of the different candidates for our electorate in the lead-up to the election.

The wonders of capitalist democracy!

Ready, steady...COOK! (Part 2)

Did you know that Clare and I went on Ready Steady Cook? See here for my post on it from March this year after we filmed the show.

Funny story by the way - I walked into The Hotel Hollywood a week after we were on air, after just 30secs, a random woman came up to me and asked: "Were you on Ready Steady Cook last week...with your wife???". I told her that it was mostly true, and that she's welcome for me to sign an autograph.

Without wishing to over-self promote, I do recognise that there are a fair few people abroad who missed the show. Below are a few edited sections...a few things to note:

• The host's propensity to touch me...for long......awkward...massagingly weird periods.
• My innate ability to talk absolute shit. The magic of TV.
• Clare's amazing talent for TV. She was terrific - and HOT! It was a shame her chef was so talkative...a lot of Clare didn't make the final cut.
• My sister Amelia in the crowd. A Milky Way for the first person to post where she is sitting.
• There's a little bit missing from the middle of the show...I'll try and get this up later.

And an extra special thanks must go out to Gerard - a good mate of mine who kindly recorded and rendered the show for Clare and I. Thanks mate - I owe you a rum.


Introducing Clare & Steve

The winning dish




Gerard's smokey flavour remix

Balancing the equation

OK, so I haven't blogged for a while. Reason? I've done the maths and come up with an equation to explain:

β(λ²) - TBT = μ

To balance the equation:

GH = β(λ) + TBT = MB

β: Belly
λ: Work commitment
TBT: TrashBag Times
μ: Boring, cranky bastard
GH: General happiness
MB: More blogging

OK, so Willis and Clare may be the only two with the mathematical background to understand. At least my short time with Mr Magdy Habib in 3-unit was worth something.

Get ready for an megablog...

Being green & pondering my mortality

Ever wondered how long you've got until fate makes you pull up stumps? I do.

With the green winds of change starting to blow even stronger in Australia, I thought I'd better also consider how a dirty capitalist like myself can actually make a few dollars to finance my hetero life partner's t-shirt addiction, whilst also being environmentally responsible.

Enter 'The Cadaver Calculator'. Not only does it provide a monetary value for how much you can sell your 'spare parts' for at the end of a day's play, but it can also provide you with the satisfaction that you're making the right steps toward true posthumous environmental sustainability.

Really, dying is just a bloody strain on the earth. Hopefully scientists will pull their algebraic heads out of their asses and develop some sort of inter-space jettison device to shoot people beyond the earth's atmosphere. We've battered the earth long enough.

Here's how I got on:

$4200.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth. From Mingle2 - Free Online Dating

How much are you worth? What would you do with the money?