Ballarat asks: who is DB Monday?

Each week upon our shiny radio show Len introduces the team - Len, Mick, Vin, and DB Monday.

Emails have been flooding in (none), the phone calls have been running hot (none) and this guy stopped me in the street and asked Who is DB Monday?

He is a man. A concept. A way of life. He is the very binding neutrinos that hold together the Show With No Name team, a man not unlike myself who chooses to eschew the microphone and speak with his hands.

DB Monday is no relation to DB Cooper, although his evil cousin, VB Sunday, has been known to lurk with intent around the Show With No Name Dim Sim Research Facility.

While dear old Roland Rock-hard-jelly gets the gig on 3BA on Saturday morning to flog his wares (and sometimes his whens), and gets the Courier's page 3 treatment when he gets his kit off and wraps his tadger in this nation's only flag to represent democracy, it's DB Monday who really keeps this town going. It's DB Monday who came up with Wrongfest.

You may or may not have heard of Wrongfest, one of the quality cultural icons on Ballarat's fairly empty calender of events. Wrongfest is as Wrongfest does - and here's a couple of pics from this year's event, where people were asked to dress up as their favourite Ballarat councillors. It was wrong. Very wrong.

But I digress. There's more to this town than teenagers trouser-banging themselves on Myspace. There's even a gay piano bar just opened on Camp Street! I walked in there and asked could I see the pianist and got the fright of my life. Maybe it was my pronunciation... but I digress.

Now that Bob Dylan has put together his own tribute to Ballarat radio's evergreen talent Kank Wolverang (see below) we can expect a new addition to the Sovereign Hill Music Festival - remember that? The Ballarat Council dropped a hundred thou or so on a festival which nobody came to. The Sovereign Hill staff were paid overtime so there was a crowd to watch James Reyne. Nobody could be paid enough to watch the Bullamakanka Hasbeen Bush band though.

DB Monday, take a bow. Having just recovered from the emotional rolldercoaster that was the Beijing Win Gold Or Die fest, it's great to have you on board.

Bob Dylan salutes Kank Wolverang

Its that time of year again when everyone looks to the voice of a generation, Kank Wolverang, that's WolverANG, to explain the tears and fears of a psychotic and psychiatric winter in a manner that befits a softly spoken git with nothing to say. "Tangled up in dudes", traditionally an untraditional Turkish work song. "If it aint turking it's just beef jerking" (Traditional Untraditional old Turkish saying) has finally landed. Born from Wolverangs tiresome work for charity whilst chronicling a lifetimes experience of crossing this wide brown sandy deposit we call Dudeton, population: me, or him, or her, or you? "Dudes" was originally born as an unguided way of passing the time between that horrible stretch that is Yass and just outside Yass and now through the grime sweat and sheer bloody hard graft, that and 20 minutes to write down the verses, it comes fully formed in a Brady Bunch environment that shows unreservedly that Alice doesn't live here anymore.

Ballarat and Beijing: better and worse

Oh god. It just doesn't get any better. London journalist bags Ballarat athlete. London journo bags "our" (don't forget even American basketball coaches who stayed here for more 20 minutes are labelled 'Ballarat residents') Erin Carroll for being the first athlete to lose in the Olympics.

Carroll had not been in the original Australia team, but snuck in when some
spaces were reallocated by the International Badminton Federation. She has been
playing at the top level for a couple of years, so she was happy just to have
taken part. Which is not something you hear often from an Australian.

Ooooooooh! Fire up the jingo machine! Man the patriotic defences! Get someone famous from Ballarat to say those British people are mean and nasty and anyway we have a bigger tally than you andwhataboutourmineral richesandwehavenicerbeachesandexcellentfruitywines. At a reasonable price.

Here's the latest from the Show With No Name Studios:

Winter hits Ballarat and we crack the SADS

Seasonal Affected Disorder. The feeling that winter has gone on for long e-fucking-nough. It's hit Ballarat. And I shit ye not - a bomb has just gone off in the carpark not far from the Hamburger Cart. That's how shitful Ballarat is at the moment with this cold weather.

In tribute, the Show With No Name is back on the interwebs. From Redan to Sebastopol. From Alfredton to Golden Point. Ballarat's biggest little blurters of the truth on a transmitter you can't hear...

Happy 4th of July

Today, someone asked me what's good about America. Y'know, bein' fourth of July and all.
Pictures speak louder than words. First, the insanely good:



Then the howlingly good:


And the ridiculously good:


And the bad? Hmm. There's the obviously bad.


The just plain bad.


And the really, really bad.


Send in the clowns. Norman, bless America, please:

Take me to funky town...I beg of you....

Hello Fans,

Ahhh Winter.
I'm currently snotting about the side alleys, coughing up gouts of organic blu tack and blowing out (in a free to air concert of freaky nose jazz), what looks like the filling for Satan own country style Vanilla slice.
But I digress...

Is there anything actually happening in this town at the moment?
Sure.....the Discount King is still pumping out bilk cheap flatscreens, Duke Hootch is selling a garbage bag of Jimathon Beam for 20 bucks and the Pregnancy seems to be thriving.

But if you're reconciled to the fact that tele is crap (may I implore you to dial up Rahsaan Roland Kirk blowing a coke solo at Montroux and compare it to a bunch of terrier brained gooseberries shitting us to death in Big Bother 65 and tell then try to tell me it's not all over for free to fuckin' air . C'maaaaaaaaaan.........).
Or if your not interested in drinking your bladder to bursting point and grinding off those odd angles of your brain with the Big Brown Bag Of Bland.......
Or aren't quite ready to join the Alien Club and watch your self (or a another) burst apart at the spaceman seams with new, mewling puking life (to quote the Bard)....
Then, pray-forth, what do you do to fill in the long lonely hours between finishing your crap job and getting up for your crap job?

Case in point.

Myself and a lassie (whom we'll call Honeypants Jones. You can hum the 007 theme if you like), decided to kick up our tam o shanters the other night and go out on the tear.
After a few heart starters at Pad Dog (a little joint i dig that makes Jazz noodles), we jiffied off into the wild black yonder in search of moonlight, good times and boogie.

Our first point of call was at the funky Quinn the Eskimo bar.
We scampered in from the cold and stood in it's nuevo Igloo stylee barn with a throbbing throng of four other people.

A D.J spun his platters, but in all honesty, he looked like he was down at the 12 grooves or less isle at Colesway.

We pushed our way through the teeming, hotpants masses (not) to sink a few brews.
After a learned discussion (choosing which one of the 20 empties was quite the drama) we then plonked (figuratively and fluidly) and sat chatting about this and that.
Hoopla! Frugalicious! What a happening thang!

So......
It was then suggested we sneak down to the Combover Bar to check out what the young saucy types are doing with their fuzz-boxes in this libertine age.

A quick stroll down the Poof St. precinct and there we were, standing solo in the joint, the bouncers outnumbering the band, punters and bar staff.

Five minutes of groovy awkward later and it was back to Quinn's for a night cap.
Highlights included some pissed chick trying to dry hump my leg while Honeypants was having a wizz and the magnificent Agwa (Spirit of Shambolic Kings).
Honeypants and I exchanged glances, had an executive and it was decided that we could probably go home and have more fun watching the tea towels dry.

And, if this wasn't rubbing salt into and already inflamed and crusty dude of a night, we foolishly stopped in at the ol' Bottom of the Ballow Hotel to see we couldn't get one last desperate drink and giggle.
We could and we did (sorta).
However the young goon yowling his Pearl Jam cover over his tinny arse guitar (aurally imagine a cheese-grater in amongst broken glass and coat-hangers) was enough to make me tip my glass of cheap sauce on the pot-plants and suggest to Honeypants we catch the next flight to somewhere where a night out still correlates with Steppin' Out! rather that a night out being equal to puttin' the bins out .

Shame Ballarat. Shame.

I'm old enough to remember when party meant kit off craziness.
When bands were keen to blart out one more bit of snazzy caper and when you danced, you fruged until your could steam a dimmie with your eyebrows. No sweat!
Where you would run (yes you heard) to the next event because you didn't want to miss any of the life affirming shenanigans taking place on Fri and Sat (usually Sun and always Monday).

But now..........

I'm had more of a randy toot watching Question time. I've been more razzed reading soup instructions.
I've had more jive from a jar of pickles and more hep from a typhoid immunisation.

Piss poor, Goldtown city.
You have been warned.


Mick 'I remember Coles cafeteria" Dog

The ugly truth revealed

This is what it looks like from inside the Dim Sim Research Production facility...

Apologies for the three people who've been watching our stuff online. Youtube production has dropped markedly since I forgot to pay my interweb fees and got cut off....

At the moment I'm blogging by throwing five cent coins through a partially opened window onto a keyboad at the Snake Valley Primary School. It's tricky.

We shall return as soon as possible - until then, think about this for a red-hot rumour:
Premier Brumby Stallion comes to Ballarat to open the special Water Pipe to save the town. Only problem is, it wasn't finished. But people were starting to panic. So, a tankerload of water is purchased, one pump is turned on up the road a bit, and the awaiting hawk-eyed journos taking pics of themselves near Brumby Stallion get to see some water coming out.

'Strue. I heard from this bloke who knows this bloke.