Video Hizzits...

BRAINSTORM: Video clip ideas for slick new three-piece.

#1: Band on the Run: Clip opens with a shot of an empty stage. Cut to pictures of band in back of tour bus. John is slouched on the back seat, lazily strumming a guitar. Mike and Pete are playing cards and smoking. These bus shots need to be in black and white. Cut back to sped up footage of roadies preparing stage for show. Sped up footage is interspersed with shots of the boys lounging around a hotel room. A television gets thrown out a window (not before second chorus. Thought: can we get a shot of the television smashing, but in slow mo? Check with Jimmy). During the bridge, the boys (now in colour), are on stage doing a soundcheck. The soundcheck needs to synch up with the soundtrack. Cut to shots of the boys in the dressing room before the show. Last chorus must be the full live performance (can we bus in about 50 hot chicks for a close up shot, I'm thinking Mike should throw a scarf into the front row, touch some hands), shot a little grainy to increase the "live feel". As chorus fades out, show a shot (B&W) of the tour bus driving away. "To be continued..." is written across the bottom of the screen.

#2: Cameo: Clip opens to boys playing (eyes front) in a garage. Carpets on the wall (Blur Song 2, that kind of thing, but indie it up a bit). Shots cut in and out of various close ups of the boys (make sure we get the brand names in. Thought: can we get a clothing sponsor for this shoot? Follow up pls.) Halfway through second verse, cymbal stand threatens to fall over. Close up of hand catching it before it falls (make sure this shot synchs up with "catch you before we fall" line). It's Will Ferrell/Steve /Jessica Simpson/Steve Martin. Boys stop playing (should we stop the music and have some dialogue? Perhaps bring the music level down during the middle eight instrumental and get some gags in. Check with Jimmy to see if he can do this.) Celebrity busts out a short drum solo (definitely stop the track for this part) and the boys are amazed. The rest of the clip writes itself. Celebrity jumps between instruments, leans in on the main mike for some back up, hams it up generally. Clip ends with celebrity hugging all the boys and heading out the garage door into darkness, boys are all like "wtf?".

#3: Ballad: I'm thinking we need this for the second single... Opening shot is of Pete sitting on the bed of a Soho loft apartment (call around, see if Mary-Kate has leased that apartment yet). He is wearing jeans and no shirt, the place is a mess. He starts cleaning up. Cut to a shot of him on a train, rain splashing against the window etc, probably with an acoustic (try a cowboy hat as well, see if it flies). Cuts back to apartment, girl running up stairs. Pete opens the door, she sweeps in and throws her arms around his neck. She takes her white t-shirt off and is wearing a black lacy bra. Now they are both shirtless (can we get Levis down on this?) and they make out. Cut back to Pete on the train with the acoustic. He gets off and walks down a deserted city street in the rain, turns into an unmarked door. It is a shady lounge. Mike and John are there. They are smoking. Cut back to apartment, Pete and the chick have had sex and are lying in bed naked. Pete gets up, holding the sheet to him and walks across the room. The girl is crying. They start fighting. She waves her arms around and pushes Pete away when he tries to hug her, grabs her clothes and runs out the door (get as much T&A in here as you can get away with). Pete sits down on the bed again. Cut back to the club. The boys are playing. Final chorus. As song finishes, Pete sees the chick in the front row. He throws the guitar away and jumps down off the stage. They hug and spin around a couple of times while the camera tracks them. Pete puts his cowboy hat on and they walk out the door into the night. John and Mike are left on stage, looking at each other. They nod knowingly.

Update...

It has been a long time since I, the least diligent blogger in the world, directly addressed you, the casually interested blog consumer. I got very sick of that style of blog and vowed never to fall victim to it again.

"It's lazy James, who cares what we're doing?" I'd say.

But my recent output of stories has been pathetic, so I thought I would post the following list of things by way of explanation, in an attempt to mollify you, if indeed you required mollifying.

1. I have been unemployed. Not the good kind either. The kind that puts you in debt to your friends and family in such a fashion as to make it impossible to keep track of who you owe what and when. (If I owe you money, speak now. For some reason I've decided it's your responsibility).

2. I have got a new job. It is very busy. There is no time to blog at this job. It would be considered extremely churlish to knock out 700-odd words of childish narrative while billable hours went to waste (I'm worth $90!).

3. I have moved house. James and I have moved from Glebe to Surry Hills, with our special new friend Kym. He is a Caucasian male of average height and skinny jeans. Junkies have been all over the glove box of my car like Phil Waugh on a Gilbert pigskin ever since I started parking near Central Station. Fools, don't they realise I possess nothing of value? The next step: mousetraps! (Thanks to the old bloke who eavesdropped on the train for providing this suggestion.)

4. I have been reading Clive James. My girlfriend gave me James' book Cultural Amnesia for Christmas. After reading the short essays that make up this book, it is difficult to have enough faith in myself to write my shopping list. In each short essay he makes reference to at least four three-volume works, in languages other than English, that he appears to be intimately familiar with. I'm pretty sure he's a wanker (and the book was riddled with terrible spelling errors), but still, I feel like a little boy with a crayon scrawling on the Gyprock(tm) walls of my parents' one bedroom council flat.


5. I have contracted a comical disease more commonly associated with less-affluent characters in Charles Dickens' novels.
Me: I can't wait for the start of next week. Uni, work, tutoring, work, it's gonna be amazing. I'll love having my routine back.
Family: You look terrible. See a doctor.
Doctor (interrupting from the other table): You have X.
Me: X? What the hell is that?!
Doctor: You might have heard of it as Y.
Me: Y? I thought the last reported case of that was seen in a French soldier with a particularly weak constitution in the trenches on the Somme, who had been eating trench rats raw?
Doctor: Don't go to work, university or the bank for at least a week.
Me: What about my girlfriend? Could I have infected her?
Doctor: She should probably burn her house down.
Me: Bummer.

Self indulgence and Sambuca on the rocks...

Does anyone drink Sambuca on the rocks anymore? I say anymore, because that's how we used to make it happen down Wagga way. Back in the day. Way back in the day when we were young and didn't care what the manufacturer intended. It was hot and we wanted ice cubes in our Sambuca. So we made it happen. Just a room full of single dudes, ice clinking in glasses of magnificently chilled Sambuca. That era ended at a New Year's Eve 2004/5 party at The Ritz when someone spilled an entire skinny bottle of White over the kitchen bench and floor, just before we all crawled to bed. New Year's Day 2005 was 44 degrees and The Ritz the opposite of air-conditioned, so the Sambuca fused itself to the kitchen and had to be scrubbed off. The smell was like licorice that had almost passed through an entire fat man's digestive system before he had vomited it back up. The ice cubes probably would have melted by the time they'd reached his colon.