I wanna see Carlo Sands on a motherfucking stage! How do I see Carlo Sands on a stage? Plus other crucial Carlo Sands news

Yeah, I know. It has been, like TWO FUCKING MONTHS since I last posted shit here.

And I know what you are thinking: You finally deign to post for us once more and it is to fucking PLUG a a fucking handful of almost entirely of forgettable open mic stand up gigs in FUCKING SYDNEY?

That's right. Exactly.

And I know what else you are thinking. You're thinking: "You've changed, man. This is it then is it? Your blog is just some fucking nearly totally neglected occasional bulletin board for whatever random shit you are doing in the next month? HUH? TALK TO US CARLO, WE YOUR FANS DEMAND A FUCKING ANSWER!!!!!!!!"

Alright, Jesus. Calm down.

Fuck. I know, yeah? I get it. Thousands of you wanna know: Where is the Carlo Sands who produced such uncompromising pieces of social criticism, such as the widely lauded, if pretty much never reposted, "Dear Motherfuckers: An Open Letter the United States Government". What happened to the author of "Could This Be The Wall?", a serious and detailed examination of the all-too-often overlooked question of *where* to line up the capitalist fuckers destroying all life on Earth in order to most effectively pump bullets into their worthless, parasitical planet-destroying bodies?

AND WHAT OF THE CARLO SANDS WHO DEFENDED BINGE DRINKING WITH SUCH SCATHING POLEMICS AS "DRINK MOTHERFUCKERS DRINK: AN ALTERNATIVE WAY FORWARD FOR THE NSW GOVERNMENT"? Huh? HUH?

Fuck, seriously, go get a beer. And stop shouting, you are freaking me out.

And shut the fuck up, anyway. It is my goddamn blog. Go write your own, you useless ungrateful little gits.

No. Yeah. Where was I?

Oh yeah. They let me on stages these days. I mean... not BIG ones. Tiny ones, in cold rooms in the basements or outside of suburban pubs. But I wanted to let you know *when*. Because I can, having a blog and all.

So, let me see, where *can* you see Carlo Sands in Sydney?

* Tues. August 7 Comedy at the Edge. 8pm. The Pub Formerly Known as the Shannon. (I will never type its so-called new name out)

* Fri. August 17 Comedy Court. 8pm. Star Bar. Book here!

* Sat. August 25 Green Left Weekly/Socialist Alliance council election fundraiser: A night of comedy, music and politics. Newtown Neighbourhood Centre.

*new* Mon: August 27 Comedy Lounge in Surry Hills.*new*

* Thurs. October 11 Mic In Hand. 8pm. Friend in Hand Hotel.

* Roxbury Hotel some time for prelim final of Quest for the Best.


See? Exciting no? NO? Fuck you.

Actually, of that list the only one I really give a fuck about people going to is the Green Left/Socialist Alliance fundraiser -- also with stand-up comic and Newcastle Greens councilor Hannah Gissane.

You know, coz the Socialist Alliance sorta stands for not letting the corporate fucks kill the *entire* fucking planet. And Green Left -- they gave me a whole goddamn "Carlo's Corner" column to rant in. So I am all for giving these bastards as much cash as possible.

The rest of it just seems cool to list. Like, to someone who doesn't know any better, it might look like I actually have some sort thing going here. You never know, one born every minute, as they say. Speaking of which, you can donate to Carlo Sands at the Pay Pal button on the right hand column.

Anyway.

So what have I been up to then, you ask? Well, you know me, busy, busy, busy. These hangovers don't generate themselves! Well actually, now I am in my mid 30s they kinda do. But anyway.

I have been very busy watching with horror as Essendon's AFL season crashes into a brick wall. They are falling down that ladder faster than Labor Party polling figures in Queensland. Or, just Labor Party polling figures.

My last post, I was whining about how hard it is to watch a goddamn game of AFL in this fucking city. I spoke of how I went into some dive in Redfern and asked politely if maybe ONE of their dozen screens playing a rugby league game so I could watch Essendon play Melbourne. Finally, they agreed to change over the smallest screen 0ut the back in the cold, with the sound turned down so the pool players could watch the rugby league on the bigger screen near by -- only, at a crucial part of the game, just as a Melbourne player lined up for goal, the rugby league finished and EVERY SINGLE SCREEN in the joint changed over to music clips and starting playing "Things that Make you Go Hmmm."

It took about 20 minutes of pleading and looking like I was going to cry before they finally put a screen back to the game, in time for me to see the Bombers lose to Melbourne by a goal.

So, give all that, you can imagine, when I recently found myself in Adelaide for a weekend, just how excited I was to be in a an AFL town once more. My visit coincided with Essendon's Friday night game against Geelong and, sure enough, it was the easiest damn thing in the world to find a pub screening it on a huge screen.

Far harder, as I discovered, was finding a pub that *wasn't*. Because the Cats slaughtered the Bombers in a debacle of a match. And it was impossible to escape. I found myself in a dive at midnight surrounded by huge screens replaying the fucking match, and in every direction I looked there was an Essendon's player missing some fucking easy set shot for goal. I ended up pleading with the bar staff to change it over the rugby league -- to no avail.

I also done some stand up stuff. Last post, I described what an open mic gig was like, based on my experiences that week at Comedy on the Edge at the Merton Hotel -- a night on which almost no one but the comics showed up. Well, a week later I was on at the Laugh Garage. This time, only the comics showed up. Not even guy running the evening bothered. So we all just decided to go home.

As well as being cold and wet and dark and in the middle of the CBD, it also coincided with the second State of Origin match. So it was maybe not surprising. But I actually had some shit I wanted to try out ahead of the Quest for the Best heat I had coming up. I was reduced to wandering the streets accosting strangers and shouting at them: "So have you seen those Drinkwise ads??? I can't relate to them!"

Then, a bit over a week ago, I was back on at the Merton. It was just like the last time I was on at the Merton, only minus the handful of audience members. Asides from the six or seven comics, there was the bloke who runs it and the girlfriend of one of the comics.

About half way through, an old bloke who had been to some of the other nights rocked up and sat in the "crowd". But that was after I had been on. It is an interesting experience trying to make nine people laugh. The main thing I took from it was jokes about horses go down well. Unfortunately, I really only have one.

But in between those gigs, I had some good experiences. For one thing, on July 4 I won the heat in the Quest for the Best competition at the Roxbury Hotel. It is by audience vote, and it helped that I stacked it like a desperate Labor Party hack seeking pre-selection for the nation's last safe Labor Party seat. And that it coincided with the State of Origin decider (I was beginning to wonder if there was a policy of only letting me rant on a stage if it coincided with a big rugby league event), thus keeping general numbers low.

But the point is I won. YEAH! VICTORY WAS MINE!!!!






'I just can't relate to their Drinkwise ads...' I'm attempting stand up comedy, so I can't show you my face.



Also, while in Adelaide, I got to rant on stage at a fundraising gig for Green Left Weekly, put on by those young people involve in the socialist youth organisation Resistance.

I have no footage of that event to show you, but I *can* tell you I made jokes about Clive Palmer. I have since read that the mining magnate billionaire wants to clone a dinosaur in his own personal Jurassic Park. And as soon as I read that I swore off Clive Palmer jokes for good. Seriously, there is no point trying to compete -- Palmer does them so much better himself.

However, there *are* pictures.

Here, I teach the youth how to do the robot dance.

And here I do my famed zombie impersonation.


Anyway, so that is me. I'd *love* to stay and chat, hear all about you, but I gotta run. Essendon's game against Adelaide, in Adelaide, is about to start and so I gotta find out if Essendon will score a badly needed upset win by a narrow margin, or whether they will thump the Crows. In the meantime, here is Texas country singer Hayes Carll, singing my song.




'Go tell your momma I done paid my dues ... I gotta gig, baby...'

The greatest drinking game ever invented -- or 'life', as I call it

The Overthinging Person's Drinking Game was a post by a friend on Facebook, that wonderful outlet that provides a window into so much that is culturally important, especially if we are talking about my incessant posting of Tom Waits clips.

Finally, a drinking game based on deep-seated angst, alienation and uncertainty. Or, as I like to call it, "life". Now I know what you are thinking: surely I drink purely for the endless joy heavy drinking brings to my life! What the fuck does *Carlo Sands* have to be uncertain about, what personal angst could possibly haunt the life of a man with such truly wondrous cheekbones, as shown in the profile pic thing on this very blog?

I know, I know. My cheekbones are truly amazing. But even the combination of my cheekbones and extensive collection of Tom Waits' albums, I too -- yes even Carlo Sands -- stare in panic into the empty pit of horror that is life in late monopoly capitalism sliding ceaselessly towards a eco-holocaust, wracked by war and Nickelback.

To prove my point, I provide a short list of just some of the terrors haunting me right now:

Facebook: It is fucking up. My account has been a nightmare for the past week or so, with comments not appearing or disappearing or being unable to access things and shit repeating and JESUS FUCK I have built my entire existence around that fucking thing. It is extremely disturbing -- like having things in your daily life just fucking disappear, like your bed at 3am, or a train that just never ... ah... actually, maybe the bastards who run CityRail have bought a controlling interest in Facebook's public float. That could explain it.

My latest Carlo's Corner YouTube rant: Like seriously, just not enough of you bastards have watched it. What, 178 views? For an angry rant about the Queen's Diamond Jubilee? Who the fuck knew there wasn't mass market for that? Watch it, you useless pricks. Then go and give me a jubilee, it is long overdue.

Trying to do stand-up comedy: What kind of mentally deranged idiot would decide to try and do stand-up comedy, and embark on a series of open-mic gigs in Sydney's suburban pubs? Severely mentally deranged idiots who probably also have drinking problems that unhinge them further.

Based on my experience on Wednesday, here is a pretty accurate guide to how such a thing is likely to go: Call time will be 7.30pm, and when you show up, defying extreme weather warnings and pouring rain and cold, it will just be a group of comics sitting around a table "workshopping" jokes among themselves until well past the start time until someone finally makes the effort to cajole enough of the pub regulars to make the thing worthwhile and then the MC won't even bother telling you when, in the line up, you will be called to the stage to perform in front of 10 or so comics who have mostly seen your shit and the handful of pub regulars dragged in in a desperate bid to give the evening some kind of point as you stand in front of a microphone on a concrete floor in the semi-exposed coldest part of the fucking suburban pub and look out, blinding by two HUGE FUCKING SPOTLIGHTS they have set up just two metres in front of the mic stand that achieves nothing except to disorientate you and stop you from having any clue as to how your rant is being received beyond the few laughs you can hear come up every now and then, but not from the only audience member you can actually see... a bloke sitting right to the side so that he is out of the glare and he just spends the entire time looking up at you blankly, never once even smiling, or even frowning in disapproval just looking at you with a studied boredom AND NOT EVEN YOUR JOKE ABOUT HOW THE QUEEN'S JUBILEE OBVIOUSLY IS GOOD FOR THE ECONOMY BECAUSE ECONOMICS 101 STATES CLEARLY THAT WHEN IN A SEVERE ECONOMIC CRISIS THE FIRST THING TO DO IS BUILD A GIANT STAGE AND PUT ROBBIE FUCKING WILLIAMS ON IT WILL CAUSE HIS REACTION TO SHIFT EVEN ONE MILIMETRE!

Fucking madness. I am doing it again next Wednesday at the Laugh Garage.

Essendon Football Club and the "Curse of June": It is June, time for the Mighty Bombers to start losing in the Australian Football League. Their season structure has been quite well-developed over the past three or four seasons: runaway success in the early stages, stunning fans and observers alike with an exciting brand of footie that helps the Bombers win games against teams much more fancied and generate excitement that maybe, just maybe, the Bombers are back! Then the calendar ticks over to June and Essendon, with the same sense of dramatic panache with which they raced up the ladder, start to lose to teams no one should ever lose to. Like Melbourne. Which is exactly what happened last Saturday night.

Seriously, I think Essendon's forwards had some sort of sponsorship deal whereby they get a dollar every time I scream: "FOR FUCK'S SAKE KICK STRAIGHT YOU USELESS BASTARDS!" If they did, they'd at least have secured financial security in retirement out of that game alone.

And while we are on the topic, let me add the near impossibility of actually watching an AFL game in fucking Sydney. True, the Melbourne game was on digital TV, an advance over ever single other Essendon game this year bar the one against Richmond (which, it not yet being June, Essendon duly won), but I don't have a fucking set top box coz that shit costs money, I have none and what little have goes on my booze bill.

So, I trudged into some fucking dive of a place in Redfern with a TAB on the ground floor and a restaurant and bar upstairs and, after much cajoling, managed to convince them to turn one of the dozen or so TV screens all showing the fucking rugby league onto the Essendon game -- the smallest screen out the back in the semi-exposed cold bit (which seems to be where I spend *all* my evenings these days) with the sound down so the people playing pool could hear the rugby league.

And then, having been earnestly watching and drinking beer, just before three quarter time, with Essendon still just in front but Melbourne coming back and the tension level building to near breaking point, a Melbourne player takes a mark about 40 metres out and walks in to a bid to kick the most important goal in the game so far and I am on the edge of my seat willing with every inch for him to miss and just as he goes to kick the ball the GODDAMN RUGBY LEAGUE FINISHES SO EVERY SINGLE SCREEN IN THE ENTIRE PUB SWITCHES TO MUSIC CLIPS AND BEGINS PLAYING "THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMMM".

It took me about 15 minutes of desperate, panicked pleading and looking like I was about to cry to convince the manager to change the thing centrally so all the screens changed from clips of shit music from 1991 that no one was watching to the Bombers-Demons game. So that I could, nearly having multiple heart attacks, watch Essendon lose by a goal. To Melbourne, a club in free fall who had not looked close to winning a single game all season up until that point.

So, as you can see. I have problems. I need to drink. Clearly. So, be as cool as Carlo Sands and try out the drinking game below that someone else has written but which I have copied and pasted to my own blog. No need to thank me, just buy me a beer. I am serious. GET ME A FUCKING BEER!

* * *

The Overthinking Person's Drinking Game by Leigh Alexander

When you experience a vague sense of inequity or deprivation but don’t have a template for whether your expectations are fair, drink.

When you aren’t sure whether the lingering sensation that you aren’t liked enough is a rational response to unfair circumstances or is in fact symptomatic of your tendency to blame your environment for your own failure to self-actualize, drink.

Drink if you experience a sudden flood of shame at the realization that you haven’t done much to deserve really any of the things to which you aspire.

If you suddenly realize you actually felt militantly entitled to something while sabotaging yourself, drink twice.

If you spend a long time mulling the nature of ‘deserving’ and what it actually means, and if you can’t really resolve the question of whether anyone specifically ‘deserves’ anything and come to an impasse about chaos and the innate unfairness of life, drink.

When a person or situation isn’t what you thought it was going to be, and you can’t figure out whether this is your fault for projecting unfounded qualities onto the person or someone else’s fault for actually misleading you, mistreating you or letting you down, drink.

Drink when ambivalence haunts you.

If you notice that you unconsciously but consistently put yourself into situations that deprive you of your resources and move you further away from your goals, drink.

If you cannot work out whether your present situation, challenge, relationship et al is yet another state of unconscious self-sabotage despite the fact you feel deprived, drink.

If you can’t tell whether you’re actually in a negative situation or just an ungrateful person who blames everyone else for your problems, drink.

Drink if you aren’t sure whether you are assuming too much responsibility for your own current unhappiness or not enough.

If you find that after long hours of contemplative malaise you suddenly feel as if nothing in particular is actually wrong and you feel the desire to relax or celebrate, drink.

If you suddenly find yourself highly focused on gratitude and create for yourself a long list of all the things that you are doing successfully or correctly or that you are fortunate to have and want to feel unburdened or euphoric, drink.

If you can’t decide whether you are actually ‘celebrating’ or simply engaging in artificial gestures of relief, take two drinks.

If you can’t tell whether you are an overly-strict person with inappropriate guilt about normal human self-moderation behavior or an avoidant adult child making excuses for your poor coping, drink.

If you feel persistently like you are failing to grow up, drink.

If you can’t tell whether a certain youthfulness in others represents an admirable refusal to adhere to repressive social norms or an actual inability to deal with difficult adult challenges, drink.

If you aren’t sure what it is right to expect of yourself, drink.

If you aren’t sure whether you are repeatedly failing to reach a personal set of behavioral goals or simply consistently feeling inadequate no matter how hard you work, drink.

If you aren’t sure whether you need to ‘lighten up’ or employ more self-discipline, drink.

If you aren’t sure whether you do or don’t want to talk to your friends about it because you aren’t sure whether you are a reasonable person experiencing occasional insecurity or a neurotic person who cannot be soothed, drink.

If you suspect you might not even have much reason to be unhappy and in fact just overthink everything and lack a stable internal compass, drink.

If you think you might just feel lost because you drink too often, but then you think too much when you aren’t drinking, cry.

If you’d rather not think about this kind of thing right now or maybe ever, take two drinks.




'I don't have a drinking problem, 'cept when I can't get a drink.' There you go, an *alternative* version of a Tom Waits classic. Seriously, get me a fucking beer right now! Use The Paypal function in the right column if you have to. I am fucking thirsty.