This entry now with 50% more POLICE CHASES

I mentioned once that a girl who went to my high school managed to achieve some small degree of tabloid notoriety by getting knocked up by Celebrity Scientologist Jason Lee. Apparently she has now converted to Scientology and they've been married in a secret Hollywood ceremony. Well, kudos to them. I guess.

It leads me to think about where other people that I used to know are these days. To be honest I don't have much to do with many of the people I went to high school with, but I do hear snippets here and there. Mainly, I pick things up from facebook, finding out who's married and who's pregnant and who's just as awful as they were the last time I saw them. I recall a particularly interesting story about two of our regular substitute teachers who ended up getting married, running away to teach at a private school somewhere in the country and probably living an idyllic life. Until she left him for a student. The best part was that her last name was Cummins and his last name was Higginbottom. I can only dream that when they got married they decided to hyphenate that.

But one of the best of these snippets was one I picked up from the local paper, back when I still lived in the region. There was a strange, nerdy yet frightening little guy who went to both my primary school and my high school. After school finished, the extent of my contact with him centred around him serving me at the local Coles every now and then. But then, one morning as I was reading the paper over breakfast, I noticed his name. At first I wasn't sure if it was the same guy but after reading the article there was little doubt left in my mind.

According to this article, he had somehow managed to lead police on a short-lived drunken police chase which ended with him crashing through the front window of a local charity. Don't worry, no-one was hurt. Nor was anyone particularly surprised.

I'm not sure how the situation was resolved. The only other people I talked to who knew much about what happened knew as much as I had already learned from the article in the paper. So you can understand that when I saw him once again at his position at the Coles checkout, I went straight over to ask him about it.

Here's my recollections of how this conversation went:

Me: So I hear you led police on a drunken chase which ended with you crashing through the front of a local charity?

Him: Ha. Yup.

[fini]

He didn't seem to be actively trying to keep any part of it quiet, mind you. I think it was more that he just didn't really know how to answer a question with more than one syllable at a time. I'm not really sure what he's doing these days, apart from the fact that you can apparently become a fan of him on facebook. Why this is, I have no idea.

-Smackie Onassis

More About School

I have mentioned a bit about my time at school. I was always kind of a geek but had the good fortune of being considered funny so most people put up with me. I was happy with this arrangement because it was so easy to be funny at my school. There was just so much comedy gold everywhere to be seen.

Probably the best source for cheap entertainment in the entire school was the librarian we had for the first few years of my time there. His name was Mr Cox, which led to a lot of very obvious jokes from the student population. But in my humble opinion, his name was the least funny thing about him.

We referred to him as the Book Nazi. His demeanor was very similar to the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld except instead of soup, it was books. There had to be total silence in his library at all times. God help you if you were chewing gum. I remember a friend of mine once accidentally dropped a book from the library's upper level and I will never forget how terrified I was for her safety.

But it gets better. Cox the Book Nazi was, in his spare time, a reasonably successful square dance caller. Seriously. A few friends of mine looked him up on the internet and found that he released his own recordings of him calling square dances, giving it a bit of the old 'Dosey Doe and around you go!'. And people actually bought them. When we discovered this, it was an incredible revelation. Word spread around the schoolyard pretty quickly.

At some stage the school found out about this hidden hobby and dealt with it the way that high schools are legally required to deal with this things. That is, the way they are required to deal with these things if you live in a Saved By The Bell-esque sitcom. They put him in charge of our PE class for a week. I don't know if you've ever been given square dance lessons by a psychotic librarian with anger management issues, but it's a strange experience. He would be up on stage in a cowboy hat, dropping phrases like 'square your sets!' and throwing in a few rhymes while intermittently screaming at any student who dared displease him. There were a lot of detentions given that week.

Another of my favourite staff members was a history teacher whose name I won't mention, because it was a bit less common. Like many of the teachers at my school she was widely regarded as being totally and completely insane. Personally, I quite liked her. I remember our first history class in year 7, she asked everyone in the room to tell the class two things about themselves. A simple 'getting to know you' exercise. The girl sitting next to me (the same girl who had the misfortune of dropping that book, now that I think about it) mentioned that her favourite food was tiny teddies. We moved on. But our teacher, not so much. The next class she came in with a huge box of tiny teddies and gave them out to everyone in the class. Except for the girl sitting next to me. I should point out that there was literally no reason for doing this that isn't simply messing with a new generation of awkward teenagers.

She also sent me on the single greatest errand I ever carried out when I was at school. I loved running errands for teachers and it wasn't a brown-nosing thing - it was more to do with the fact that it got me a free ticket out of class for as long as I could stretch the errand out.

"Sarah, can you take this note to the front office?" she asked me in class one day, "Tell them it's from me, they should give you something to bring back."

I nodded and wandered out into the corridor. Obviously, I read the note. I was a bit confused when it only had three words on it: 'Bag Of Money'. I wasn't sure what this meant. Had my history teacher finally snapped and was sending the school office a poorly worded ransom note, using me as a messenger? Or did she just fancy her chances of them assuming someone else had ok-ed giving her a free bag of money?

Either way, I handed the note in to the front desk, telling them who it was from. To my surprise the office woman simply nodded and handed me an actual bag full of cash. I considered trying this for myself many times, just going up to the office with a note that said 'Every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD' or 'Free Maxibons for life' and seeing whether they reached into that cupboard and pulled out what I wanted. I was never game.

I got along well with that teacher, probably because history was one of my favourite subjects. I was always extremely interested in the way that ancient people lived. As I have mentioned, my aunt in England dabbled in archaeology (or, as I like to describe it 'Jetting around Europe digging up ancient remains with Baldrick from Blackadder'. In other words, my dream life) so I had a bit of an inside scoop on this whole ancient history business. It seems impressive in Australia to find something that's more than 50 years old, but over in Europe they're falling over historical artifacts. They can't build a carpark without having to do a full excavation. I remember hearing the story from my mother about how one of my aunt's neighbours had been digging up his backyard and had discovered a human skeleton. It was quickly cleared as not murder due to it being thousands of years old, probably Roman. It was a small country town and the neighbour wasn't quite sure what to do with the discovery, but knew that my aunt was involved in archaeology. He just gave the skeleton to her to deal with. My aunt, being a very busy person, put the ancient human remains in a box under her bed until she could find a spare moment to deal with them. She was that chill, she didn't mind sleeping with literal skeletons in her closet. Although it was even worse because they weren't in the closet, they were under the friggin bed.

Because she lived on the other side of the world, I didn't get to see her that often but I did speak to her on the phone sometimes. I recall a few months later remembering the skeleton incident and asking her how she had ever resolved it. I will never forget her reaction.

"Oh yeah," she muttered, "I should probably get around to doing something about that."

Best relative ever, seriously. Hopefully she did end up remembering to deal with it, because I never did hear what happened with that.

But back to school. As I say, I was very interested in history, but was also a slightly sarcastic teen who didn't quite understand the best applications for her sarcasm. I was in class one day, passing some judgement on an ancient civilisation. My teacher decided to stop me to teach me a lesson, as they tend to do.

"You know, we live in a very different society today. You can't judge those people by today's standards," she mused.

It was a very good point, but I would put what I said next as the single greatest academic comeback I have ever used.

"Yeah? Well, watch me because I think I just did!"


At least that girl who sat next to me got a laugh out of it.

-Smackie Onassis

Feelings are boring, Kissing is awesome

Over the years I've had a fair few "romantic entanglements". When I was at school I always developed crushes very easily, usually on my friends. Unfortunately for me, they usually looked at me as one of the boys rather than as a potential ladyfriend. The people who were interested in me were people like the kid who was mad for buses. Don't get me wrong, he was a good guy, I just wasn't interested. However, that's not to say I didn't date at all.

One of the first guys I went out with was a guy I did theatre with after school. I really liked him, he was a sweetheart. Unfortunately my friends did not. He was a bit of a geek and so they ripped on him mercilessly, constantly pressuring me to break up with him. Eventually they made up this whole big thing about something he had apparently said about me. I knew it wasn't true, but I broke up with him anyway because I was sick of my friends being jerks. "Peer Pressure". The guy actually wrote me a really sweet letter explaining that there'd been a misunderstanding, and that he was sorry for anything he might have done. It really touched me, but I didn't reply and I felt guilty about it for the rest of high school. At that stage I wasn't expecting to see him ever again.

When my friends and I went to schoolies, we didn't do the whole Gold Coast thing. Instead, we went to Byron Bay after the official schoolies time had ended. It was cheaper, and there would be a significantly lower douchebag quotient. We were out dancing when I saw a friend of mine being chatted up by a guy. A guy who looked very familiar.

"Hey," I sidled up to my friend when the guy had gone to buy a drink, "What's the name of that guy you're getting all friendly with?"

She told me and sure enough, it was the guy I'd dated when I was fourteen. I'm not sure how that even happens, considering how far away from home we were, but it was him. It could have been very awkward. Luckily I'm not the type of person who cares about these things and I thought it was hysterically funny. I even got to make my peace with the whole situation, telling him how bad I always felt about breaking up with him. He told me that he'd always felt bad about some of the things he did to me too, things I didn't even think were a big deal. We laughed, forgave each other and I told my friend that he was a good guy and that she could go out with him if she wanted. They ended up dating for about two years, I think.

The guy I had the biggest crush on in school was a guy who basically disappeared after we graduated. People saw him around occasionally, but no-one really knew what he was doing. What I remember about him was that he lived on a working cattle farm and was a die-hard supporter of communism. He was a down-to-earth country boy, but he was also a total weirdo. One of the conversations with him I remember most vividly was about garlic, of all things. I was talking about how I needed a mint because I had eaten something garlicky. He questioned why I would want to get rid of a delicious garlic taste. I told him that while it was delicious, other people might not be so fond of it. Other people would especially not want to kiss me. He informed me that he liked garlic so much that he sometimes picked up whole cloves of garlic while he was walking through the kitchen and ate them raw. I nodded, trying to figure out if he was insinuating that he wouldn't mind kissing me. Whether he was considering it or not, he didn't kiss me.

The problem was that he was so strange I could never tell if he was flirting with me or messing with my head. I remember once hearing him say 'Hey Sarah, want a date?' only to turn around and see he was offering me part of his lunch. To be honest, I love dates so this was just as good, but it was still confusing.

I didn't hook up with my friends a lot in high school, unlike a lot of people. That is, until we all turned 18 and started drinking legally. I thought kissing was the bees knees and so did it most times I was drunk. I rarely went any further with the guys and now realise that I probably must have looked like something of a tease. But guys, I just really like kissing.  

There was one particular kissing story from when I was in year 12 that was repeated back to me by almost everyone I knew the next day. We had all gone out to celebrate our upcoming graduation and gotten quite drunk. Yes, in Newcastle we started celebrating our graduation before we even graduated. It was on a weeknight too and we all still had to go to school the next day. It does kind of seem to defeat the purpose.

I ended up spending most of the night macking on a friend of mine. The problem was, I'm quite short and he was one of the tallest people I've ever met. He was at least a foot taller than me. Probably more. Our friends were pissing themselves. They came up to me afterwards and told me that it was like watching an honestly funny comedy sketch. I haven't seen that guy for years, but I have actually heard that he is now doing stand-up somewhere on the other side of the country. I can't help but wonder if he has ever told that story.

-Smackie Onassis

The Sporting Life

Most people who know me probably wouldn't expect me to have played a sport regularly at any point in my life. This is partly because I show very little interest in watching any kind of sport and partly because I am the clumsiest person in the known world. I do actually enjoy exercise but have no real interest in any kind of organised team business. I never want any company, preferring to walk or jog or lift weights by myself. I guess you could say I'm not a team player. This wasn't always the case. I actually played a fair amount of sport when I was in high school. For those keeping track, this was when I was working on cementing my position as 'Most Overcommited Teen Ever'*. 

The main sport I played was water polo. I had done a lot of swim training before (we lived down the road from the beach and my parents wisely decided I should be good at swimming) and it made sense for me to play a water sport. I had all the grace and co-ordination of a newborn fawn who is also drunk somehow, but I put up a mean egg-beater kick. 

I was never that good at the game. I played in a mixed gender league and while I discovered certain advantages in the double standard that none of the boys could hurt me when I hurt them (official water polo motto: It's not whether you win or lose, it's how badly you injure the opposition), they were still much bigger and faster than me. And could catch a ball. That probably helped.

On land, my main thing was running. I have always loved running, although I have had a lot of knee trouble from doing too much of it while my bones were still growing. I can remember how surprised everyone was at school when they first saw me sprint. I only had tiny legs, so no-one was expecting me to actually be fast. From the way they described it to me afterwards, I'm assuming it looked like something out of a Warner Bros cartoon.

The problem was that I didn't care much about competitive running, but my teachers did. It was an academic school and the entire PE department had a huge complex about it. They would pump their fists and insist that they didn't teach at a nerd school, that there were heaps of jocks who were all just wagging class that day. I remember one year I hadn't bothered showing up to the school cross-country. I don't remember what excuse I gave, just that I wasn't there. I'm not sure what the system is elsewhere, but at my school the criteria for going to the regional cross-country was that you'd achieved one of the fastest times at the school event. Imagine my surprise when my teacher handed me a permission slip.

"I... you realise I didn't actually compete? I can't have qualified. On the basis that I wasn't present," I stuttered, legitimately confused.

"Yeah, I know," she replied, "We know you can run so we'd like you to go anyway."

I was flattered, but as it turned out I couldn't go anyway due to a music thing that was on the same day. "Priorities". But I was lured back into the world of school sport when the girls' rugby team started recruiting. They desperately needed new members and I guess they figured I was better than nothing. I had one training session before the first (and last) game of my rugby career.

As always, I wasn't taking it seriously at all. I thought it was all a big laugh until I saw the girls I would be playing against. All of them were twice the size of the biggest girl on our team. Then, the game began. I had never before seen a school sports event that turned into that big of a bloodbath. And I know I'm not exaggerating because the boys' team were on the sidelines, gasping in horror.

"Geez, girls play dirty!" I heard them shout as yet another player left the field, too badly injured to continue. I gulped and took my position again. Keep in mind that I was one of the smallest people on either team, so I knew I could be in trouble. Usually the aim of sport is to get the most points, but after the first half of the game or so, my aim was to get out of it without sustaining any permanent damage.

By the end of it, there were more players off with injuries than there were players left on the field. I'm not even kidding. It was like Roman gladiators. The only thing I remember about the last portion of the game is seeing the fear in the other girls' eyes during the scrum. Everyone was terrified.

I made it out alive that time, but I never played for the girls' rugby team again. I still watched their games though. Sensational entertainment.

-Smackie Onassis

*If you don't believe that I deserve this title, this is what I was doing when I was around sixteen: studying for my school certificate, going to weekly after school lessons for singing, piano, saxophone and drama, rehearsing for a local amateur musical, swim training once a week, water polo training twice a week, water polo game once a week and also I was working part time at Video Ezy. I also somehow managed to write a novel that year, although I never had the confidence to show it to anyone.

What's up with all the files?

If you take a look over the desktop of my laptop, you will notice two things. First, I keep my virtual space just as unkempt as my physical space. There's shit everywhere. Second, you will notice that it is plastered with word documents, all of which appear to be pretty stupid. 'JOXE' is one of my favourites, as is 'Is This Appropriate?' which is a file I made recently for when I want to say something but I'm not sure if it is appropriate. I jot it down and then evaluate it objectively later.

The thing is, most of my files are full of nonsense things that I have thought and obsessively recorded. But there is a very good reason for this. A few years ago, I noticed that people kept coming up to me and telling me things I'd said to them that were apparently very witty and insightful. Even though I was allegedly totally sober during most of these incidents, I had zero recollection of any of them.

There was one in particular that made me sit down and think. A friend of mine had apparently been giving a speech but had accidentally drooled a bit, resulting in a spit bubble popping out of her mouth. Apparently, upon hearing this the first thing I had said was, 'Was it a speech bubble, though?'

I have no memory of saying that. The only reason I am able to tell this story is because a while later that girl was talking to me and quoted that line back to me. I laughed and told her that was a good joke and she should keep it up her sleeve for impressing people at parties. She gave me a confused look and confessed that she had been directly quoting me. I was a bit embarrassed.

Another similar incident occurred years previously, when I was in about year 7. It was a long time ago but I still remember it purely because of how awkward it made me feel. We were in class. Something happened to our resident sarcastic jock. I don't remember what it was, but it wasn't a big deal. Casually, I commented on it. I remember thinking that it was a pretty obvious thing to say but thought I'd better say it anyway. I was expecting the class to respond by groaning and saying 'Yeah, you think you're pretty smart, don't you?' which is the reaction I usually got. Instead, my comment was greeted with uproarious laughter. My gut reaction was that they were actually laughing at me (how emotionally secure was I?), but I quickly realised that they were laughing because what I had said had actually been funny. They were laughing at the jock, who was clearly embarrassed and didn't really have anything to say for himself. If Back to the Future has taught me anything (WHICH IT HAS), he was also probably covered in manure at this point.

Now, it was probably due to the fact that I was startled as well as the fact that I hadn't thought it a very important comment when I'd made it, but I instantly and totally forgot what I had said that had been so funny. I accepted the laugh and moved on. The problem was that apparently it was such a good call that people actually came up to me after class to talk about it. I had literally no idea what I'd said, but I didn't want to admit it. I seem to recall the conversations going something like this.

Classmate: Hey, good call against Johnny Football* in maths today!
Me: Thanks very much.
Classmate: The look on his face, it was gold!
Me: Yes, that was quite a look.
Classmate: How did you come up with that line anyway?
Me: Oh well, you know it was just... oh my god, look over there! Is that someone who used to be on TV doing a publicity stunt?
Classmate: What? That's just the weird albino kid eating a twig.
Me: My mistake.

This happened way too often. The best explanation I could come up with was that I was briefly and occasionally possessed by the ghost of a stand-up comedian (did someone say BRILLIANT SITCOM IDEA?). As a result, I now write down everything I say or think that might be funny. I open one of my files at random, pick a spot (No, I can't just add it to the end. For some reason, I always end up adding it to a totally random spot within the file.) and get typing. I later pan through it for any nuggets of comedy gold. While I do occasionally delete things, it's pretty rare and the result is a bunch of files full of ridiculous non-sequitors. Here is an excerpt, unedited:

Victorian Era Ghost'd!: It is like punk'd but instead of Ashton Kutcher, it is a Victorian Era Ghost!

I always lose Creepy Chicken

Creepy Chicken = trying to outcreep each other, last to have a nervous breakdown is the winner. There are no real winners.

Social conventions questions: Is it weird to approach someone you haven't spoken to in years to tell them you had a dream where they died? I'm going to say yes.

Housemates sitcoms:
A nerd and a stripper!
VIG + NC**
A guy who is afraid of cats and a TALKING CAT (studying psychology ;D)

I just realised that to get to certain places in the house you have to walk over a bed, like, just plain old step up there and walk over it. And I had never even noticed that was weird.

What's the time?? Time for a NUMERIC PALINDROME!
12:21
11:11
03:30

I don't like fair fights. Well, it's not that I don't like fair fights, I just really like unfair fights. I like to hit a small bat with my giant rock fist.


So, there you have it. For the record, that was page twenty of a file entitled 'crafty drafties'. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Oh also, to the fine people over at Hell Is Other People, yes those 'housemates sitcom' ideas were inspired by you guys. I am planning on writing for your show, whether you like it or not. You will try to tell me that I am not but I will still submit scripts, regardless of whether you even read them. Seriously.

-Smackie Onassis




*His real name was actually surprisingly similar to this.
** This is supposed to stand for Victorian Era Ghost + Nuclear Chemist, which is an idea I had based on "true" events. It has since been pointed out to me that Era begins with an E, but this is UNEDITED PEOPLE.

EDIT: Guys, everytime I see the phrase 'time for a numeric palindrome' I just lose it. I think it's the funniest thing. Is it just me?

McNaughty: All you could ever want in an English teacher

I have been meaning to do an entry about my school days, but I inevitably end up deleting them. I think there is just too much material. But I guess you have to start somewhere, so I will do my best. I will start with my teachers.

Now, unlike most hipster types, I loved high school. I was smart so my teachers liked me but I was also considered funny so I got along with my classmates just fine as well. After awhile I realised that for some reason I could do just about anything and my teachers would let me get away with it. I have no idea why this was. I think it was because I was charming or something, or maybe it was just the fact that no matter how much I acted up in class I would always hand in my work on time and get excellent grades, so there wasn't much they could do to stop me. After awhile I started actively seeing what I could get away with.

The best example of this came one day while I was wandering the halls absentmindedly during class time. I ran into one of my English teachers.

"Shouldn't you be in class, miss?" I said sternly. She got embarrassingly far into a rambling excuse before she realised that I was the student and she was the teacher, and not only did she not have to explain herself to me, but that I should probably have been in class too. I'm not sure how many people could have got away with that, but I did.

That was my favourite teacher, hands down, ever. She was a lady who we will call McNaughty. This was actually what I called her when I was at school, but I figure it's not something she will find by googling herself so I'm safe. She was sensational. Every year when her birthday would come around she would sit at her desk and sigh loudly. With one arm lazily supporting her head, she would say that if anyone was going to buy her anything could it please be a bottle of Jack Daniels? Obviously no-one ever did. In the circumstances that high school students get their hands on full bottles of Jack Daniels, they are not turning it over voluntarily to their teachers.

But me, I'm a social rebel. I defy conventions. I kiss when I have coldsores. Yes, I'm that badass. In year 12, myself and a friend of mine had a free period directly before her class. I had turned 18 by this stage so I decided to actually buy her that bottle of Jack once and for all. I can still remember walking in to class and putting it on her desk. She had this strange way of laughing where she sounded like she thought whatever you did was very funny, but she still hated her job and wanted to kill herself. She would shake her head and roll her eyes, but she would still be laughing.

From there, that friend and I went out in our free period every second Tuesday and bought her some kind of gift, the more bizarre the better. We would trawl the local op-shops and discount stores looking for the ultimate prize. Every fortnight we had the pressure of having to out-weird our previous finds. The last one we found was the only one I really remember, but it really was the best one. It was a cigarette lighter, but when you went to use it a tune would play and lights would flash. There was also a topless man on it who would change position when you adjusted the angle. It was one of the funniest things I'd ever seen. Every time we gave her one of her gifts, she would laugh that same laugh. I like to think that it sounded more sincere every time, but it's hard to tell based on memory alone.

The biggest sign that she appreciated our efforts came on my graduation day. She caught up with the both of us after the ceremony and handed us each a little bag, the type you put birthday gifts in when you can't be bothered with the endless frustrations of wrapping paper. A variety of wonders were contained within. I remember mine included a plastic lei, a small bottle of sparkling wine (which we were on strict orders to not reveal to anybody) and a mix cd of her favourite songs from the 80s. It was the best thing. I also remember her borrowing my phone that day to send a message to one of my friends, masquerading as me. The recipient knew straight away that it was a phony because she had used a lot of text abbreviations and my messages were always completely grammatically correct. I find this ironic, considering the message had been written by my English teacher.

The year after I graduated I ended up going to her house and getting drunk with her. We turned her living room rug into a dance floor and thrashed away to trashy 80s pop. She was a lesbian, but don't worry, it wasn't anything like that. She was just really freakin cool. Every now and then I would text her when I was out drinking, encouraging her to come out but she never would.

Naturally, we lost contact after awhile. I have no idea if she is still teaching at that school, or if she has decided to cut herself off from everyone whose name does not start with 'Jack' and end with 'Daniels'. I don't have her number any more, but I probably have her old email address somewhere on my computer. Maybe I will drop her a line someday.

-Smackie Onassis

Why is the world so ridiculously bizarre? Is it just me?

So today I was a total loser and saw a comedy show by myself. Basically, I needed to get out of the house and thought a light-hearted bit of cake-related stand-up might be exactly what I needed. And it was a great show. The only problem was that I spent the whole time being a bit freaked out by how eerily similar the comedian was to a guy I knew at uni.

At first I thought that it was just me, over-reacting as usual. I thought perhaps it was just the fact that he simply wore the same kind of clothes and that both of the guys were guitarists who used the word 'motherlicker' and made jokes about the same indie bands and had the same haircut and the same general comedy style and... then I realised that wow, that's a lot of similarities.

Anyway, it got me thinking about this old friend of mine, let's just call him 'Bones'. As I mentioned, he was a guy I went to uni with and I always got along well with him because we were both musicians with odd senses of humour. I can't remember a single conversation we had that didn't turn into some kind of absurdist comedy piece with no audience.

The way we met was a classic example of a phenomenon known as 'Newcastle Disease'. Yes, the ridiculous hometown of mine was Newcastle but from what I have said about it, anybody could have guessed that. Newcastle Disease was a phenomenon that meant that everybody knew everybody, usually through several different connections. Bones and I were introduced to each other because we were both in bands that had the same drummer, and we were both studying journalism and not taking it very seriously.

Now, we didn't realise it at the time but our official introduction was not the first time we met. We were introduced, exchanged pleasantries and went on our merry ways but I went away with a strange feeling of deja vu, a feeling that I had met this guy before. My suspicions were confirmed when I looked through my phone and discovered his number there. My first thought was 'Uh oh, have I hooked up with this guy before?', but thankfully for our future friendship, that wasn't what had happened. I later remembered that we had actually met while on holidays and exchanged phone numbers with the intention of catching up later that night but due to crappy reception it didn't end up happening. I will admit that I was totally planning on hitting on him though.

When I realised I had his number, I had to make an evaluation that I find myself making all too often: will it be creepy if I text him and tell him what has happened? Being me, I decided that yes, it probably will be creepy but I'm going to do it anyway. Luckily he was a great dude who found the whole thing funny and we ended up becoming fairly good friends. I'm pretty sure I interviewed him for a uni assignment once, just because there were a bunch of musos doing the same course and we were all lazy jerks who interviewed each other for all our assignments. I seem to recall him being the support act a couple of times for the band I played in.

Anyway, he is currently sharing a blog with a girl I only knew briefly but am totally facebook stalking and it can be found here.

Also, he will more than likely read this so: hey man, how's it going? Long time no see, eh?

-Smackie Onassis

See My Friend's Show, You Guys

As I have mentioned, the Adelaide Fringe is on. I had my first fringe experience last year, where I tried to cram in as many shows as I could into the short time I was actually here. This year, I have the time but not so much of the money. However, there are a few shows I will go out of my way to see.

A girl I was friends with in high school has her own show this year, a show written specifically for the festival. I am planning on seeing it because well, I want to support her, but also she is one of the funniest people I have ever met in my life. For a time in high school, we were something of an unstoppable comedy team. I seem to recall our year seven maths class being nicknamed 'The Sarah and Steph Show' by our classmates. In the last couple of years I haven't seen her much since we both moved on to bigger and better things. Although, where I dropped off the performance radar, Steph is actually becoming somewhat successful.

So basically, what I am saying is, go see her show you guys. I haven't seen it yet, but from having known her for about ten years, it's going to be totally great. It is called True Stories of Heroism and Adventure, and you should all go see it.

-Smackie Onassis

"Comedy Stylings"

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