The Shady Blues Band hold the fort at the Whitmore Hotel, Wedensday, August 11, with Mike barnes at the mike.

Swing, Lindy Hop and Balboa – all afflictions of the feet. Cure them with Blues Avenue Trio at the Whitmore Hotel, Friday August 13. Kick up your heels, bust yer bunions to Sweet Baby James Meston on guitar and vocals, The Preacher Denis Surmon on double bass and vocals and Jeff Algorythms on drums. Free to get in but must bring dancing shoes and happy face.

You can find the Whitmore on Morphett Street, just south of Gouger Street. But mind the scaffolding some untidy fucker has left all round the joint. I tried to trip on it and sue them but the bloke doing the restorations looks pretty scary.

Saturday August 14 you can clear the wax out of your ears listening to Hoy-Hoy!! at the Rex Hotel.

Sunday Afternoon (August 15) , between 2.30  pm and 5 pm, Sweet Baby James and Rob Eyers unleash their Double Voodoo blues onto the discenting lugs of patrons of the Gilbert Street hotel.

 Elsewhere in the city – the Wine Underground, for example -  the Bluescasters will be sowing the seeds of RnB joyweed – proper retro  RnB, that is, not the pillow stuffing that’s masquerading under that moniker these days. The Wine Underground is in Pirie Street, the City. Music starts around 5 pm. Coopers on tap.

Monday, August 16, you can catch SWEET BABY JAMES & ROB EYERS at Exeter on Rundle.

 Now… it’s my turn.

I was given cause to remember when I was a mad scientist. Some laboratory smartarse put itching powder inside the collar of my dust coat. Talk about mad? -- I was fucking LIVID! Being a scientist I sort of knew who done it but I needed to prove it scientifically so I applied for a research grant for a Workplace Animosity Negating Kit.  Got not a bean. Then the right approach hit me... I applied to the Department of Defence for an elephants’ bollocks size grant for the Detection and Deportation of Perpetrators of Possibly Terroritsy Activities in the Private Research Environment.  Jackpot. Just  like I’d won the lotto.  With a amazingly small amount of the ”research” grant dough I was able to hire two thugs who pulped the possible perpetrator, ripped off his duds, stood him on his head, stuck a funnel in his rusty sheriff’s badge and emptied a box of gunpowder and a box of sneezing powder into his anal cavity. I wish it were me supplying his household with new toilet fixtures. A dozen new pedestals in a week, I heard. With the rest of the “research” money I took up a study tour in the Maldives from where I am filing this ‘report’.

Before I scarpered, however, I left a Petrie dish (See Petrie dish photo over there) on the stove. It was my newest evil experiment. I put in a lump of human excrement then squirted in a litre of Unholy Grab for Power juice, a tad too much Unbridled Ego Emoleum and set the oven on gas Mark 3 or 175 degrees in a fan-forced doohickey. I fear I may have left in on too long...

Gidday Ostrayans... I’m half of the great comedy team Abbott & Costello that brought Ostrayans cracking laugh-a-minute japes such as “the  Children Overboard” gag, “the GST” joke, and the Workers’ Choice – "Work Choices".  Pretty soon I'm gonna be the King and then I’ll give this country a massive dose of what I call the Acceptable Hypocrisy of Convenient Christianity.  Let me explain that to you poor oiks who didn’t go to Oxford: That’s when we – or me, because I’m like God only better - manipulate or “translate” stuff in that Bible book to fit more conveniently with our - or my - current agenda.  And I’m pretty good at it if I do say so myself! Take people like workers, women, nig-nogs, cripples, unionists, teachers and public school principals, nurses, musicians and scientists... don’t take ‘em now, though, I need them... but before this and after the election they're the sort of people I usually reckon we should poison.  But not today... Today, by the rule of Acceptable Hypocrasy, they are all my friends. Except scientists. And public school principals. And musicians; musicians are dangerous parasites that should be treated like illegal immigrants and drownded. Music comes from shows like Ostrayan Idle - we all know the songs on there and we can sing along with them. And that brings me to another point: Because I’m so fantastic I’m becoming a pop star, too, like Jason Donovan... but not if he’s a puddle-jumper, mind. Maybe someone more like Phil Collins... everybody loves him. And like everything else I do, I’ve borrowed someone else’s work to make me look even greater. Don't worry,  I wouldn’t think of frightening the great slurry of numpty Ostrayans with something new or original. So.... Here’s my first hit song....

Bathroom behaviour. The horns of a dilemma prod me like a honeymoon husband’s knob in a bride’s back. First conundrum:  Cold mornings and sharing a house slash bathroom. No one wants to go into the cold frigid bathroom first up. Because it’s too fukken cold!  I like to go in last,  after the tub and tiles have been warmed by megalitres of hot water and steam. But that always means the bath mat is sodden and damn near frozen when I step out of my comfy slippers onto the fukken glacial glutinous wad. I am inventing a disposable bath mat system that has a continuous but perforated mat fabric stored on a roll under the bathoroom washstand like a giant kitchen roll dispenser.  You merely rip up the disgusting mass of floor mat left for you, hurl it out the window then roll out a nice dry and clean mat for yourself. The second horn of dilemma has me stumped. Having parroted ad nauseum my dear Mater’s instructions for the correct use of the face- washing flannel thing, when I paused to consider it sensibly I realised just how how stymied I was. “Always wash your face first,” she rabbited at me, “..with the clean face cloth,  and scrub the Devil’s Kitchen area last; not the other way around.” That makes sense only of you burn the old flannel after each use. We don’t. It stays in the shower stall for a couple of months or so until it’s rigid. So I now find myself hoist by my own petard, about to start sloshing my face with a face-washer that has 24 hours previously been used to mop up a day’s worth of date sweat, follow-though and gusset-glue from the nether regions of more than a few co-habitants. No fukken wonder people at work keep asking me If I do Commando stuff at night... I have enough camouflage muck on me to be invisible standing ankle-deep in the Bolivar treatment ponds.

Gigs....

The Whitmore Hotel Morphett Street, has Shades of Blue on deck Wednesday August 4. It's a treat for lovers of Blues and Roots music with some of the city's finest musicians and singers taking turns in the spotlight. I think that was a lovely if not shitfully boring piece of prose, don't you?  Could get me a job on any newspaper entertainment column, eh?

Thursday.. or was it Friday? Fukked if I know. I asked Jeff and he told me but I must of not been paying attention because now I've forgotten what he said. Something about a Santana cover band at the Franklin. Maybe Friday? Somebody remind me, please.

Saturday night August 7 pan!c has a private show. I'm ambivalent about private shows; they generally exclude a lot of the riffraff and pawpaw-heads that turn up and annoy you at a public gig, but you can also get attacked by a type of pest that thinks he has some claim on you because someone he knows hired you to work for them. And by extension you have to do whatever he or she (yes, sometimes it is a "she") fukken says.  I'm not complaininng, but... well, yes! I am complainig. Move on.

Sunday October 8, the Wine Underground introduces Sugacane, the latest project from ex-Hiptone fellow Brother Tea. I like Bushells, myself, often buy the loose leaves - they are tastier - but you can get along to the Wine Underground on Sunday and try a cup of Brother Tea and some Sugarcane. Or Sugacane, I think it is. Obviously more "Interweb English".  Fer fuks' sake, when I went to school we were taught to spell sugar cane properly, with all the teeth-rotting implications. Off track again... gig starts around 5 pm, in the City, Pirie Street.

Monday, August 9. you can catch SWEET BABY JAMES & ROB EYERS at the Exeter on Rundl> The guys' current album Double Vooodoo Blues has hit the top of the Roots and Blues Music charts in Australia and they would like to thank you for making that possible. Not you personally, I - and they - both know you never got of your idle fukken arse to go to one of their shows or even buy a CD. Or even download it. No, they want to thank all the people that made it possible and helped them ... that's enough, it's more than the 75 words allocated for this item.

Next week though, You need to get along to the Whitmore Hotel on Friday August 13 for a Swing Dancing session with the Blues Avenue Trio.These guys swing like a ram's nutbag in the mating season and smell just as alluring... if you're a ewe. In heat.