Late Night With the Buskers....Day One
My life has been different than a lot of the others this busking festival,
I have been given the job of hosting ‘Late Night with the Buskers’...

This is an event that takes place at The Loaded Hog, a venue that seems to attract the eve
ning meat market crowd, 300+ twenty somethings after one thing...to get completely shitfaced on a vast array of cocktails, spirits, strobe lights and boom boom music. With the sole intention of finally landing a partner ( or partners ) in which to share sweaty inebriated sexual encounters with in the wee hours of the morning.
Please don’t get me wrong I have no adversity to this sport of the under 25’s ( I was there once too )..
But is does make things difficult when you are trying to execute cleverly designed bouts of comedic absurdity.
The line up the first 4 days..Thurs- Sunday... was Peter Mielniczek
( formally one half of Hoopal), Peiter Post, Max Moolenaar of Holland and myself.

The first night we were asked to create and perform a 2 hour show with an intermission for the pheretestosterone animals ....
We wanted to do something different than the carefully, constructed displays of skill that are witnessed every day out on the streets.
So an array of sketches were concocted, featuring Peter Mielniczek spinning plates on poles and then running out of the venue and down Manchester St to the massage parlour for a $^&^^** to return before the china smashed, and later later doing surrealistic impersonations of great artists using a black cloth and a wooden frame.
The dutch appeared a few times, the first an appearing rabbits from hats routine which consisted of a 4 min set up for a 2 sec gag, I would return on to the stage to dismantle what looked like a giant limbo consistenting of 2 mike stands at maxi height a couple of broom handles tied together in gaffer, fishing line, stools, hats and rabbits.
Doing that and trying to silence the uninterested mob with 2 liner base level jokes and heckler stoppers wasn’t an easy task, to bring them back on for a sketch which included an array of wigs, glasses, hats, jackets, beards birthdays and bewilderment was and act of defiance in ourselves. In front of us the 100 seated people stared and the 300 or so others grunted, gurgled and carried on their quest for flesh.
Max returned with a spoof magician act who I introduced as my mentor Hans Zimmerframe from Dresden, he held ‘em, they laughed but the grey background noise of the grunting hogs was never silenced.
They had a look when Peter and Max returned with a mathematical equasive puzzle for them to solve while looking at pornographic pictures.

Early on Meinielchk gave them the chant Hoggy Hoggy Hoggy....Oink Oink Oink which engaged the vocal cords of the thriving mass...
It became the catch phrase weapon, which I used to gain attention before putting on Pieter Post, he got them, managed to create bouts of silence and absorption as he went through the paces of Mr Jones, brilliant fuck ups lined with brief demonstrations of skill finally managing to crack a Havana cigar out of a pink pig with a bull whip.
I brought everyone on for the curtain call finale....
The Flying Hog.
A four men rendition of Mr Jones’ solo finale where the mammal in question is placed on a teeter board and projected through the air in to a ‘royal throne’ on a pole held by Mr Jones standing atop a table full of glasses filled with beer, drool and lipstick. The hounds barked and howled and glasses were raised ( it’s hard to clap with a beer in your hand )....
The battle has been won..

Shaken but not stirred we climbed the two sets of stairs to our dressing room, a empty office floor of 3 rooms with partitions, toilets and...silence. Denny, the stage manager came up and emptied the buckets of well earnt cash, collected by herself and Rewi ( a door sized maori ) at the door, on the table.
It didn’t take long to divide up the swag,
Sweaty shirts and jackets were hung up to rest,
The four battle scared vaudevillians headed back down into the jungle.
Strobing, flashing, drum and base had turned our audience into an epileptic herd of wilder beast .
Weaving through the pack, finally getting to the watering hole we sample a couple of the house ales, very good I must say, this is a brewery pub and we have a tab.

I headed home and put myself out at about 5am.The next two days it got worse, hogville hogged and snorted, we put or brains together, switched routines, spliced sets, tightened up and took control taking them the full distance both nights, ducking and weaving, bobbing and swinging, our array of punchline combinations, hoggy chants and Hitler impressions gave us marginal points decision wins in our favour both nights.
Closing a show at midnight combined with a seeminly endless bar tab makes for a life of eating eggs,sausage and bacon at 5pm with coffee and a newspaper to start the day. Afternoon siestas at 9.00pm ready for a show at 10.30 here we go again...this is gonna be a long and languished affair
People are starting to call me Ozzie

Sunday
Woke up to find that I had a street show booked at 3pm, my phone said it’s 2.30 now
Having completed that calling it was again time for breakfast and another round of
zzzzzz’s..
What a beautiful audience they were tonight, quiet and attentive, listening, laughing and applauding in appreciation to our well honed stories and sketches,
Mr Jones nailed ‘em to the wall as a close, then we spanked them with the Flying Hog Finale.
The audience was 90% ours, by that I mean people who had specifically come to see us, as opposed to the last three night battles
The last show with Peter Post and Max, sorry to see them go.
The Rhonda Movement take over on Tuesday. A day off tomorrow, a tab and a homebrew Pub made for late night laughs.
A few other buskers have seemed to discover our late/late world some sticking it out to the very end which has been Rock Pool latley normally after a few hours of dancing.
I keep being mistaken for Mr Osbourne and being bought various concoctions of bats blood, by alcohol fuelled punters, in pheromone soaked dance bars.
I sleep at.... oh I don’t know....... I remember it was light and people were going to work.
My eyes are stinging must get home and pull the blinds

“Am I turning into the Prince of Darkness?”

Monday
Was a day off, a big sleep in then off to the record shop to buy an Ozzie DVD and get the lyrics of ‘Paranoid’ off the net...yeh I am gonna do it, pressure is too much from too many sides.
Tuesday
A new line up for the Hog and a perfect festival audience for it, (they normally only get a dozen or so barfly's in on a Tues.)

Tonight is jammed.

Other performers have asked if they could do a guest spots at our gig, tonight was Eric Amber doing his 7th only gig solo.
I opened, the people were lovely I did 20 mins of banter and it only seemed like 10.

Pete went on next the plates have been dropped and Hitler is getting longer,
I then brought on Eric who talked about fear and shitting his pants went down well, they laughed and clapped.
Then came on The Rhonda Movement .
Entering via the audience, 3 woman from Australia
( Actually all born in NZ ) dressed in Wigs, scarlet knee high dresses and sunglasses
.
A conga drum opener where the characters are established, on the right Penny an over the top raunchy tough female, on the left Meredith the straight looking woman next door type and in the middle Staci plays the dead pan bored miserable clown.
Brilliant character interactions pursue as a vibrator is pulled from underneath Penny’s dress and used to produce the drum roll which starts the strip sequence off, all 3 in different ways strip to rauncher dresses which match their hair.
Bells, cymbals and castanets occupy the breasts, spoons and washboards their stomachs, the audience love it and howl when in a well rehearsed moment of silence Penny reaches into her crotch and
‘tati-ingk’
the sound of a bicycle bell is heard,
then the sound of scissors on a grater is produced by the apathetic clown from down there
The rhythms are wild and interactive, drumming on your neighbour while reaching into your crutch for punctuation's must feel great
another moment of silence and Merithi closes her legs and
‘Uhonk’
The sound of a horn
The other two stare and stare, then let her and her UHonk join in for their finale.
The audience went nuts when I brought them all on for a curtain call.....nice one all...
Mo the Guvnar ( Yes we are at Mo’s bar ) decided to lock the doors that night for a debriefing session, so Eric, Postie, The Rhondas and I ( Meilchehk is on the wagon ) discussed the future of the event and tasted a vast variety of the beers brewed on the premises.
It’s daylight again I must remember to bring my sunglasses to these evening gigs....

The next few days sauntered by in a foggy mix of late nights laughter a different guest each night Clark McFarlane from Planet Banana blew the roof off with Ferbo the Peruvian juggler and Rumple blew his reputation by coming off after 9mins of a 10min set....I didn’t think it was possible for Rumple to go undertime !Friday and Saturday were what we expected after last night but a lot of ‘our’ people had got in first and the venue was so filled that the hoonboons couldn’t get in for some flesh smelling Consequently while the comedy show was going on indoors, there were obscenities and punches thrown on the street, a lovely mix...
By now most of the buskers have quit the Dux Pond night sessions and joined us at the Hog Farm.

Sunday we had the wrap party at piggy headquarters most of the 2003 line up were there letting out the stress’s of the last 10 days out in the way only we know how to do.
Highlights

Singing on stage was something that was a first for me.
.Yep I did it, dyed my locks black (Thanks Rhonda girls ) donned the make up and went out..
Ozzy Osbourne made an appearance singing Paranoid with Skatenaked on Lead and drums and Meilnick on Bass...
twice...once at the Dux on Sunday night then once again at the Hog on the same night.
Swimming underwater at an outside pool with Eric listening to a steel band orchestra through specially designed underwater speakers
Pointing out the Hog dish ‘Pete’s meat between two breasts’ to the many Peters on sight.
Ulla arriving on Friday in the midst of the madness, staying up, sticking it through with laughter ‘till the end.
Skatenaked grooving into the Blackstreet Boyz set Sunday night at the Dux...
The Whiteroad boyz out danced them and took the stage,,,
Alfred & Seymour left, only to return in g-strings with fireworks up their arses...(were they washed?)
The crowd roared the young girls went so gooey they were left stuck to their chairs screaming..
Patrick Duffy (The Gargoyle) being dragged up on to the stage with rope by a 3ft something bald gargoyle midget called Jimmy.
Watching Strawberry learning breakdancing moves with Seymour

Quote of the week.......
" A punter is just a prop you don’t have to carry round the world with you " Pete.
Nickolas 2004