I’m on a conference call right now with Dally Messenger and other leaders of the celebrant community with the Attorney-General’s office, and he’s made a big claim: That people who aren’t Australian First Nations, or Jewish or other religions, don’t have a culture. Thoughts?
A tale of two burghers
One of the best things about working in the wedding industry through Covid is that I’ve finally become the disappointment my step-mother said I was. #kickinggoals
My three most embarrassing celebrity interview stories
You’ve probably heard about Seven’s Matt Doran’s not listening to Adele’s new album before interviewing her. Classic “you had one job” kinda material. I’m not defending Matt, but I’ve got three embarrassing celebrity interview stories of my own from my time on radio if you’d like to hear them?
Story number one was my first interview with someone famous. Not my first conversation, that was with Diesel, aka Johnny Diesel, as I answered the call in the 4CRM reception and put it through to the announcer on air. This first story is about TISM.
TISM had just released 2004’s The White Albun was described to The Age as “basically what Jet are doing, which is taking The Beatles ideas and changing them a little bit at the end. If it’s worked for Jet, it’s going to work for us, that’s what we’re hoping.”
Their record company had emailed out opportunities for phone interviews and I, volunteer aspiring radio announcer at 107.5 FM Stereo 4CRM Community Radio Mackay keenly replied in the affirmative.
At the allotted time the phone rings, I put the phone in the second studio in speakerphone mode, point a microphone at that speaker, decide not to wear headphones, click record on the Sony MiniDisc recorder, and answer the call.
It’s my first phone interview, I’m nervous as hell, I have lost my paper notes, and I’ve forgotten the name of the person I’m interviewing. I think on my feet and pretend that we’re live on air. My thought is that I can make out like we’re live and get them to tell me their name.
Ron Hitler-Barassi is a smart man and he senses my screwup. He’s got his notes. He interrupts my spiel about how I’ve got my good mate from TISM on them phone and I’d like them to introduce themselves to my (very small) audience.
Ron Hitler-Barassi says “if we’re such good friends Joshua Withers from 4CRM Mackay, why don’t you introduce me to everyone listening.” The interview is me stumbling over myself the whole time and it’s terrible.
Luckily because I wasn’t wearing studio headphones I couldn’t hear that I had left the horse racing satellite channel up and the interview was me, Ron Hitler-Barassi, and the horse racing. Sadly lost to the archives.
The second story is from a few years later when I’d gotten a paid job in commercial radio - as a broadcast engineer/nerd/IT guy for Sea FM on the Gold Coast - but I actually wanted to be on air so I was volunteering hosting breakfast at the station now called Juice 107.3FM.
It was really running me down, on air from 6am to 9am as a volunteer and then working a full-time job after. Tired does not begin to describe my state of being. This morning I’d gotten off air, forgot I had a phone interview, and fell asleep on a couch.
I’m asleep, and the radio station receptionist wakes me up and tells me that Guy Sebastian is on hold for me.
I remember that I was supposed to listen to his new Memphis album, and I was supposed to have researched his motives behind recording the album, and what it all meant - I had done none of this.
Fudged the whole interview, revealed to Guy Sebastian that I hadn’t listened to the album, didn’t know what Memphis music was like, and I was a fish out of water. Guy’s management banned me from doing future phone interviews. Rightly so.
Embarrassing story number three is from my very first day on air at what was then called Star FM Port Macquarie, formerly Rox, now Hit. I had a fill-in co-host for the week til my actual co-host was home from mental health break after the last co-host almost drove her mad.
It was International Men’s Day 2010, so my pitch was that we try and get as many international men on the breakfast show as possible.
I start tweeting and mentioning people furiously figuring if I asked lots of people, a handful would reply. One of them was @russellcrowe.
I don’t know why Russell Crowe called. My guess is that he thought I was a kid pranking him and he’d freak me out by actually calling.
Either way, here’s the awkward and uncomfortable recording on Soundcloud.
I die inside listening to that.
"More evidence suggests that nature does something essential for our mental health"
“More evidence suggests that nature does something essential for our mental health. Specifically, we have learned that nature tends to result in reduced circulating levels of the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol, lowered blood pressure, blunted “perceived stress” after stressful life events, and lower short-term levels of anxiety and depression. We also appear to ruminate less after we’ve spent time in nature, a phenomenon distinct enough to appear as differences in neural activity during brain scans. One recent study selected 541 vacant lots across the city of Philadelphia and randomly allocated each to either receive no intervention; receive regular trash removal and mowing; or be turned into open pocket parks, with trees and a pleasant, short wooden-perimeter fence. Survey teams blind to the intervention were sent out to question residents at random before and after the great experiment, eventually interviewing nearly 450 people about their mental health. When the study was complete, its architects found that residents of neighborhoods where lots had been greened were much healthier psychologically than those whose lots had merely been cleaned. Around greened lots, neighborhood-level rates of feeling “depressed” dropped by 42%, feeling “worthless” by 51% and having generally “poor mental health” by 63 percent.
Read the whole article in Outside via Kyle Westaway’s Weekend Briefing email.
I turn 40 in a few weeks. There was a time where I never believed I’d make it past 21 as I saw friends and people around me dropping like flies.
Between 21 and 39 I mostly felt immortal.
But for the past year all I have thought about is what will happen to my blog when I die.
There’s a new Terminal command in macOS Monterey: networkquality.
It’s an internet speed test in the terminal.
Is this how Apple News is supposed to work? I make an active decision to not engage with content from a certain brand, and in its place I just get a full page notice that I’ve chosen to not engage with that brand?
I don’t know who need to hear this, but the young male voice that says “Welcome to McDonalds, we’ll be with you in a moment” as you pull up at a McDonalds drive through is a pre-recorded message.
You don’t need to say “thanks” like I do each time.
“Most people in life want one-of-a-kind outcomes.
The problem is, in the quest to get there, most people follow the same path as everyone else.
Lesson: If you want an n-of-1 result, don’t take the 1-of-n road.”
You need to know about, and install the Shortcut for, 12ft.io if you browse the webs and don’t want to have a subscription to every flipping news website on the planet.
Presenting the Hard Fizz HQ Gold Coast toilets … shot for zero 9.
Taking expressions of interest in a Slightly Interested Koalas Yacht Club from any of you that have too much money.
“Over the last couple of years, governments have been telling Australians what to do, now there has been a need for that as we have gone through the pandemic, but the time is now to start rolling all of that back.”
If you’re waiting for a sign …
“I realised that anything I did long enough to master was no longer useful to me.”
– Designer, Milton Glasser
A mate mentioned pirating software and it took me right back to 20 years ago where we had a keygen or a hack or serial number for ecverything.
They really were the good ol days, access to the world’s software, entertainment, and media, the only cost was time, so much time waiting for the painfully slow internet to bring you the goods.
It’s a hard position to advocate for - piracy - but letting kids have free access to software created a generation of modern creatives and tech professionals. Back then, to learn Photoshop or CAD or programming we’d pirate it, now you’ve got to pony up dollars every month. How do kids today learn this stuff without paying thousands of dollars they don’t havre for it?
This thread on antivaxx rings so true right now in my own life 🧵
“Rich people need it. Poor people have it. If you eat it, you die. And when you die, you take it with you. What is it?”