For reasons unexplained she loved the Monkey Man

A moment of silence if you will please. The joke will probably have been made by SW fanboys on the web around the world already, but I can't help but feel that if he'd ejected when advised then he'd still be alive.

Well, I'm an unemployed bum lately all right, and I suppose if I'm going to sit around all afternoon in my boxer shorts listening to the Travelling Wilburies, and then stay up late into the night downloading episodes of Get Smart, I don't really have an excuse not to blog. The problem of course is that this hardly makes for interesting reading. In fact that was pretty much my whole day so far up there in one sentence. So I suppose I'm going to have to cast the net a bit wider time wise or at least elaborate on the boredom anyway in order to drag this out to a suitably painful length.

The job hunt continues to suck and suck hard. Reluctantly, I'm off to WINZ on Thursday, and we all know what a super bunch they are to deal with. I can't tell you how greatly I look forward to a number of conversations that begin "have you considered call centre work?". Maybe I should start applying for call centre jobs, but I have this annoyingly persisting idea that 6 years of university education should mean something to someone out there in the job market, that having got through it all, it might, you know, qualify me to be able to take on a selected number of specific work related tasks as well as or even (gasp!) better than other people. I seem to be finding however that in communications, publishing and industries of the like, they don't hold no truck with no fancy 'qualifyin'. Nosirree Bob.

ME: As you can see, I studied English, History and Journalism, subjects where writing and editorial skills are highly important. For 6 years. I have a piece of paper and all.

POTENTIAL EMPLOYER: (Yawn) What else you got?

ME: Well, I've been working part time over the past year, mostly editing. I also researched and wrote a couple of publications very similar to your own by myself, here's one, check it out.

POTENTIAL EMPLOYER: Yes, but do you have any experience?

ME: Well, I'm starting out, but I have had a bit of professional experience over the past year, and then I thought with the qualifications...

POTENTIAL EMPLOYER: Bah! Come back when you're Rupert Murdoch.

ME: But how do I get the experience?

POTENTIAL EMPLOYER: Why, get a job in the industry, obviously! Just not here. Never here. Security, see this man out.

ME: I'm in the novel Catch-22, aren't I?

POTENTIAL EMPLOYER: An apt analogy, but what given the man vs. the faceless bureaucracy thing, the no forseeable way out of the situation, and the depression, paranoia, cynicism and doubts this creates for you, I prefer to think of the whole thing as Kafkaesque.

ME: Kafkaesque?

POTENTIAL EMPLOYER: Yeah, I did an English degree before I got into this job of not hiring English graduates.

A job interview that felt, in a surprise move, much better than that typical example there, was the one I had last week, for a job at TML publishing as Assistant Editor. This would have been a cool job. They publish a variety of things including travel guides, a what's on in Christchurch newsletter, restaurant guides and the like. I actually felt pretty good about the interview, which never happens, chatting away to the editor and the head of the company. I sought to convey to them really how much I would like to do their job for them. They said thank you, we'll be having second interviews Monday and Tuesday of next week, and assured me they'd get back to me.

It's now Tuesday, and I have heard nothing. Never, EVER get your hopes up when trying to get a job. It's just what they want.

INTERVIEWER 1: Did you see the look on his face when I told him his qualifications looked impressive?

INTERVIEWER 2: Priceless. You know, I think he actually believed it when I said we would be in touch soon! That always cracks me up. Did we do well, master?

SATAN, DARK LORD OF THE PIT: Yes, my vassals. Now it only remains for us to wait several weeks until he has almost forgotten his crushing rejection and dashed hopes, and only then do we ring him as if in afterthought to officially inform him he hasn't got the job.

INTERVIWER 1: (admiring look) You see? That's why he's the Lord of All Evil.

SATAN, DARK LORD OF THE PIT : And how.

The long periods spent waiting for a job I want to come along, applying for it and being rejected have been filled with a few other things. I got roped into playing in the band for The Witches of Eastwick which the Riccarton Players are putting on at the Mill Theatre. The Mill Theatre is so named because it used to be a mill, back in the day when mills were not big white shiny new technology fests like the Champion place down Moorhouse Ave, but giant brick buildings with coal and horses and the mouldering corpses of trapped 10 year old chimney sweeps. Barrel-chested, red-faced men named things like "Silas Black" and "Ernest Merriweather" almost certainly used to run around it bellowing things like "One on't cross beams gone owt askew on treadle!"

My point is that being constructed way back in 18somethingsomething using the good ol' Industrial Revolution school of architecture, it is a cavernous stack of bricks. In practical terms, this means of course it was not designed and built to function as a theatre, but essentially as a giant machine for grinding large amounts of wheat into flour, which could then be made into bread, which could then go mouldy so Alexander Fleming could discover penicillin. Or something like that. This brings one or two idiosyncrancies to its operation as a theatre.

The first thought that struck me in the Mill Theatre anyway, as I sat there looking up 25 or so metres to the roof, is that any decently sized earthquake would take the building and form a large irregular pile with its many many component bricks, a pile that anyone in the building at the time would be at the bottom of. Not so good. I presume it has been earthquake strengthened some, otherwise we wouldn't be allowed to be in it. But still. Call me morbid, but there you go.

Secondly, the theatre has no orchestra pit. Back in the day at the mill, a pit was where Ernest Merriweather's cousin Cyril spend his 17 hour working day acquiring black lung over at Lake Brunner, and no-one was too concerned about where to house the rhythm section, what with that dicky flange on number 7 needing constant attention. So we can't go down a hole in front of the stage and play as you would normally expect. Instead we sit on a sort of mezzanine floor that appears to have been constructed at about the level of a Year 13 woodwork class, held up by bits of 2 X 4. Perhaps that's overly harsh, as it hasn't collpased yet - it just sags alarmingly at certain points - but it still doesn't instill confidence, especially when one has to climb over the bannister of the more permanent looking staircase (up to what were no doubt the offices, where Silas and Ernest used to go to receive their weekly wage of thruppence ha'penny) and walk over a large, not visibly supported by much plank just to get out there. Ominous creaking noises are also frequent and are only relieved sound wise by the whole thing occasionally taking the time to scream 'Temporary edifice! TEMPORARY EDIFICE!'. No really, it does. It's most distracting.

This platform of death is in the wings, just above where the actors go on stage, and has big stage curtains in front of it, so as to spare the audience the trouble of having to look upon our collective loathsome visage. So we can't see a damned thing that is going on, and can generally even hear only bits of it. If you ask for my opinion on the show, I can't give you one, because I haven't actually laid eyes on any of it. At all. I can tell you that there is singing and what sounds like dancing. In fact, I doubt I could pick the two witches (the ones that aren't uni theatre scene person Elly) out of a police line-up. Jeff Clark is also in the show, so that's 2 people I know in the cast out of about 30, who periodicially come down the (much more solidly constructed, lucky bastards) stairs and file out onto the stage and presumably put on a show that in some way relates to the John Updike novel and the George Miller movie. This is only an educated guess though.

On top of this the music is quite hard, and enjoys nothing so much as changing time signatures, keys (one piece goes from 5 flats to 6 sharps at one point) and even clefs (tenor clef? What the hell? Who reads that?) largely at random. With insufficient practice time, I'm feeling pretty inadequate when I try to play it, and I'm not the only one struggling some of the time, so there have been some pretty awful noises emerging some nights...nevertheless, people keep saying "sounding good band!", which either tells us they're not listening or that no-one can really hear us anyway. It's a fun time all round, and it's a fun time that will end up using 3 Friday and Saturday nights in a row (because the show has an inexplicably long run...I think it finishes about 2016. It also costs about 853 dollars to get in.) Luckily I actually know a few people in the band, so we do what you do when you're in a show band, which is to moan (generally in a good-humoured manner) about being under-appreciated, harrass Luke Di Somma, and make fun of all the non-band people. If I just had the money to buy Coke while I was there it would almost not be a big waste of time.

Bitch bitch bitch. Something good must have happened lately...well Adam and Heidi came down over the weekend, and among other things, Adam drunkenly produced possibly the best taken out of context drunken quote since Dave and "you're pretty" when he claimed at Si's house: "The police are on a bit of a witch hunt with this drink driving thing...it's the same with, you know, shagging children." (As the only sober person present at the time I of course immediately made a mental note to remember that for posterity.)

Also Karen and I went to the Marlborough Sounds 2 weekends and a bunch of big old dolphins went swimming past the house, just as I was randomly going out on the deck in time to see them, it was very cool. As an added bonus, the extended Malcolm family were very good about not doing to the dolphins what they normally to do things from the sea, which is to haul them out of the water and eat them. Aside from the dolphins swimming past which, brief though it was, was a definite highlight, we walked up the island (steep) and I read some Dean Koontz (terrible. I mean, really) and spent many hours playing with Karen 's nieces, who after meeting me about 3 or 4 times now look upon me as nothing so much as a hairy mobile jungle gym, I'm pretty sure. Ruby is 6 and seems to have picked up the phrase 'hi-yaaaa!' from somewhere, although her own particular school of kung-fu is based almost solely around the technique of running up to me and hurling herself bodily towards me and the chair I am sitting on at the time, while repeating the previously mentioned war cry. This has the potential to end badly for me depending on how I am sitting and just which soft bits of me her flying knees / elbows / head first come into contact with. Sofia on the other hand is 3 and is mostly about the thrill of the chase - she normally runs up as if to perform the 'hi-yaaaa' move of her elder sister, stops, laughs, and runs away again. She repeats this until eventually I get up to investigate, at which point she runs around the room like one of those motorised toys that bounces off furniture, making giggly squealing noises. The 'being picked up and held upside down' game seems popular with both of them, as does the 'beat Ben to the ground, pile cushions on him, and then sit on them' one. (See also 'rolling Ben along the floor at speed until he is brought to a halt by a heavy item of furniture') It's all rather tiring (if fun), and full credit must really go to parent-type people, who don't get to hand their children over to someone else at the end of the weekend, and also have to deal with the not-so-fun parts. In the finest traditions of the role of dodgy (pseudo) uncle though, I did manage to teach them both the phrase 'who ate all the pies?' which they were both denying like troopers in a few minutes (Ruby claimed unprompted that all the crumbs were on Sofia's mouth; Sofia simply brushed this scandalous accusation aside with additional giggling) , so our time together did at least have some serious educative purpose, and was not all just playing silly buggers.

I had more, or maybe I didn't. But I'm going to bed now, anyway. Perhaps I'll come back and write more shortly. Or more likely not. Or maybe I'll write some of the long overdue email I have to send to people. In the meantime however, the comments will be accepting essays of 100 words or less on the subject "Chain Smoking: Why Dave Shouldn't Do It." I leave you with an outtake from the Travelling Wilburies recording sessions...

GEORGE: Take it, Roy!

ROY: No, please, by all means, you take it, George.

TOM: I'll take it...

GEORGE: Shut up Petty.

TOM: Oh, please? I never get to take it.

GEORGE: There's a reason for than, Tom. Hands up everyone here who was in the freaking Beatles. That's right, I didn't think so.

ROY: Oh, just let him take it George, just so long as Dylan doesn't take it.

TOM: Yeah, the man couldn't take it if it came up and begged him to take it.

BOB: Hey, that's unfair guys, I am still in the room and besides, I'm more about the meaningful lyrics anyway.

ROY: Quiet, hippie!

BOB. (mumbling) Sorry Big O.

ROY: That's Mr Orbison to you, you talentless hack! (cuff)

JEFF: You know guys, I could take it.

TOM: Who the hell are you?

ROY: Who let you in?

GEORGE: Security!

JEFF: I'm Jeff Lynne. I co-founded ELO!

BOB: Show-off.

That was a 100 percent accurate historical recreation, don't you know.
Ah, I can't back that up.