Originally i was going to put all my thoughts about moving to a new city on Uncommonly Awesome, but then i thought, “Im far too lazy to write one blog, let alone two (or three if you count bobtrusty.com)”. After reading some other travel writers and blog writer sites, i kinda thought i should just merge it all into Unamusing Musings, simply because its old school and has Honey Chicken recipies on it.

For those that dont know, I was unceremoniously kicked out of my fantastic flat that i had been living in for five years by a junkie with connections. My landlord gave me 60 days to vacate because he wanted to move his crackhead daughter in and “do the place up” or so, leaving me quite high and dry.

Quite possibly the new tennant.

Being that I wasnt working for a living at the time, my only option was to move into another flat, get a full time job and waste another year in stagnation. An option that I was resigning myself to pretty quickly.

Then I came across the travel bloggers.

I had been interested in Lifestyle Design for a while due to the bible, er, The 4 Hour Work Week, which had significantly streamlined my side business, making me an even lazier person than i already was. The whole location independant thing was festering in my mind for some time, but i never really did much with it as it seemed a whole lot like effort, which i was adamantly opposed.

Reading Thrilling Heroics finally gave me the idea that i should move to Thailand. It was perfect. I had a company that was earning enough money for me to live on in Thailand, but not Melbourne. The rent was cheap, the food was cheap and the living was pretty damn good. Perscription Meds sealed the deal!

cha-ching!

So within 2 weeks, i had purchased flights, looked up places to stay, a hotel room for a week to orient myself and started selling off my mounds of useless crap. Big screen TV’s, hundreds of dvds, comfy beds and computers all went out the door, making me very little money compared to the amount I spent on the items.

Flight day came and I was off to a brand new country that i knew very little about, cared very little about other than its penchant for cheapness and my desire to be unemployed for an entire year without starving to death or selling my body for prostitution.

Arriving at the main airport in bangkok was fun, being that I could barely walk (busted my knee a few days before) and was using a walking stick. Fun fact: They have a cripple line for people like me to expedite the process! Thats stylish, and all it cost me was full functionality of my limbs!

Hiking my two bags and a laptop case out the doors to find the taxi rank, i found my way to one of the more professional ranks that gave me a price for the area i was going to and a driver to take me there. The man was super friendly and could barely speak a word of english. Obviously, this was gonna be fun.

“Where loo flom?”

“uh… sorry?”

“cuntly?”

“… (did he just..)”

“yoo cuntly?”

“… OH! Where am I from? Australia!”

“AUST-LAY-LEE-AH! With the Kan-ga-loos!”

“Yeah! the Kangaroos!”

We got along real fine after that. He was telling me that he had been driving taxis for a long time. What he didnt tell me was that in the back seat, there was no seat belts and his speed was getting faster and faster.

Ive been in more car accidents than I can count on BOTH hands, so I have a real issue with fast drivers/drunk drivers/taxi drivers/scuba divers and he wasnt helping.

Faster and faster he went.

I took a peek over his shoulder at his speedometer and nearly shat myself : 120km/ph. Looking (very briefly at light speed) at the freeway speed signs, i was pretty sure that the big “60” didnt mean “120”. I could have vomited or done the appropriate thing and asked him to slow down a bit, but i figured that hed been doing it for a while and that he’s still alive for a reason. Mai Pen Rai, Baby!

Pretty much what i saw in front of us

Arriving on one of the main strips in Bangkok (sukhumvit), I was impressed to notice that the first thing i saw were billboards. But not like normal sized billboards as i would see at home, these suckers were 4 times bigger. Im pretty sure that my eyes didnt get 4 times smaller, so these bad boys were BIG.

My wonderful driver was telling me all about “always traffic. Bangkok always traffic”, but i was more impressed with the fact that it was 11.30 at night and there were people looking like they had just woken up. A 24 hour city i can believe in. 

What I didnt realise was that my hotel was in Nana, which as most expats will tell you, is one of the delightful red light bar and suit tailor districts. Hookers, ma. Hookers as far as the eye could see. And suits. I could look sassy while getting harassed by women just like my early adult years!

The view from the top of my hotel. Hookers not shown.

The gun of a driver finally found the hotel at the end of the street i was living in and we parted ways. Needless to say, my hotel room didnt look like the internetted brochure, but it was cheap, relatively clean and had the SyFy channel, so my week looked pretty damn set from where i was stationed.

-Rick

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After promising you it, here it is

TACO - Puttin on the Ritz

Yes, a cover song of the great Fred Astaire made by a man with a light sabre as a walking cane. How can you go wrong?

Starting off with the obvious stark contrast between poor and homeless vs rich and light-tastically affluent. Obviously money can buy you anything except talent or a faster walking speed, Taco is looking like a really creepy Tim Curry, overdressed for his role as Frankenfurter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I dont know about you, but if a guy that looked like that walked that slow in a poor neighbourhood where i was from, hed have his light sabre walking stick cracked over his skull and his fancy spats stolen. Frankly, i dont know why they just didnt do that in the first place. Im sure you could buy a decent crack rock for the price of his gloves alone.

Breaking into the whole al jolston look-alikes to say “super duper” is creepy and really, unnecessary. Nothing says racial tolerance like a blackface routine!

Tap routines. Tap routines are awesome. Really, this half-arsed review is just about my jealousy at not having a wicked walking stick and doing my own tap routine.

At about 3minutes 20seconds mark, we get to see a Crispin Glover and a really bad Statler and Waldorf (from the muppets) look-alike. It made my night.

So what did we learn from this clip, kids? thats right! Money will buy you bigass dentures, make you look like Tim Curry, get your ass whooped in the ghetto and a really cool light sabre walking stick. Im sold!

-Rick

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After a couple of weeks off, ive come back refreshed and as witty as ever. Thats not an actual guarantee at anything witty, its just me trying to ease you into another 80’s Music Video Flashback!

Eric Carmen - Make Me Lose Control

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “Rick, how on earth did you get so damn handsome?” to which i reply that we arent here to talk about that, but to talk about how goddamn ugly Eric Carmen is. Sure his tussled hair and lack of lip colouring make him so damn appealing that even *I* think that hes a viable mate. If I were a chimpanzee.

Lets face it, its gotta be a giant novelty comb to be running through HIS hair. 

Eric Carmen had huge hits with All By Myself and Hungry Eyes from that asshat of a movie Dirty Dancing, but Make Me Lose Control was just an awesome song in its own right.

Cashing in on the 50s nostalgia that Billy Joel did a hell of a lot better, we’re taken back to a time long ago when fries came with a shake and women still had unburnt bra cups. Im wondering if they even brought back capital punishment for this clip as SOMEONE needs to be punished.

They even brought back vynil! Remember that kids? If you were born in the late 80s and onwards, im sure you only remember your own sense of self entitlement. Thats ok, I’ll remember them for the both of us.

I should probably admit that i miss tassles from 80s velvet jackets. Thats a timeless look that should be broken out on any occassion such as weddings and funerals. Tassles on anything makes a party, just ask any tuck stop stripper!

Anyway, I love this song, just because it reminds me that having nostalgia flashbacks about nostalgia flashbacks in video clips is still nostaglic….. what?

-Rick

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Wow. Just… Wow. After flying down to New Zealand for a week and coming back to an empty flat, I just cant help that I need something to ease my troublin’ mind. How about some 80’S MUSIC VIDEO FLASHBACKS!

Madonna - Borderline

Holy hell I love this song. When I was a younger lad in my early 20’s, I was somewhat a metalhead.

Yes, I loved me some delightful screaming-into-the-microphone music as much as the next angsty early adult. The 80s music started to creep into my musical selections, this being one of the first. So much so, that one night after drinking obscene amounts of alcohol at a Heavy Metal night at one of the clubs in the city, my friends and I staggered to an all night McDonalds at 3am for a cheeseburger. Taking a seat with our glorious haul, “Borderline” comes over the loudspeaker and much to the absolute horror of my headbanging friends, I -quite loudly- sang the living crap out of this song to the top of my lungs, cheesburger in one hand, invisible microphone in the other. The security guards thought it was hilarious, so my night was obviously brilliant.

It helped kickstart a lifelong love affair with all things that sadden most people who lived through the decade, but are much loved and nostalgia’d (yes, I make up words now) by those of us with only basic memories of parachute pants, hypercolour tshirts and David Bowies triumphant package in The Labrynth.

Onto the video clip!

Well, from the opening, as in the first 7 seconds, Madonna is feeling up a little boy whos trying to dance. PERVERSION. Unadulterated perversion. I just figure that thats what you get for trying to be “hip” and “down” with the youths of the 80s. You werent cool until you were dancing badly with a B-Boy posse.

The story looks like its the old “Poor Boy Likes Girl, Girl Likes Rich Guy, Girl is unceremoniously taken advantage of sexually by Rich Guy, Poor Boy shoots Girl and Rich Guy in a fevered rage” tale. Its Shakespearian for sure. Alas, In flashbacks we learn that Poor Boy wasnt at all attracted to the Girl’s bright-lemon coloured high heels and lime socks combo. It was a citrus assault on the retinas.

Its all ok though, because the Girl remembers her roots after failed modelling career and constant promises of “you wanna be famous, dont’cha?” and goes back to the ghetto to get Poor Boy back. The sucker that he is, takes her back and everything is hunky dory. Or is it? After her failed jaunt in “nude modelling” and subsequent sex tape production, she became a stripper with a heart of gold. Too bad that she makes more money than Poor Boy who after kissing her and smoothing things over, went off to marry one of her friends out of financial spite.

I think that I’m just a pretty jaded guy.

-Rick

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Whitney. Nothing epitomises the late 80s than Whitney Houston.

If only perms that good were still around, Id have a bigger smile on my face than she does when on a coke fuelled binge with Bobby Brown. Before he beats her.

AND THERES THE JOKES, KIDS! Domestic violence and drug fuelled rage!

Anywhoo, the clips brilliance lies in the fact that its supremely bland black and white shadows its “SUPER-FUN-HAPPY-TIME” colour scheme. Dont get me wrong, I love the awesome lavender coloured dress with hot pink lipstick combo, I just prefer it on my hookers than I do my 80s pop stars. But you know what? I often cant tell the difference and I like it that way.

Not only is this tune so super catchy that it makes you want to claw your brain out of your skull with a rusty spoon, it contains random images of people “dancing” and just being plain ole wacky! You cant get much better than that, can you? .. guys? … bueller?

Honestly, Jeans with a white singlet tee was your icon of the era. The true winner of the 80s was Levi Strauss & Co. Its a timeless combination that I often wish i could accomplish. Its really a jealousy thing.

For all the singing about wanting to “feel the heat” with somebody, the only guy she even remotely comes into any kind of bodily contact with is a guy in a top hat, looking like he was rejected from the video clip to “Puttin on the Ritz” by Taco (which is coming up in a few weeks, mind you). Then again, right near the end of the clip, she gives him the beatdown! I think it was a reversal fortune of things to come!

“Dont ya wanna dance, say you wanna dance, dont ya wanna dance” kind of strikes me as the rally cry of the psychotic, clingy person that “JUST WANTS TO LOVE YOU!! GAHAAAHAAAAA!~” before boiling your bunny and cutting off the head of your girlfriend. Dancing, Its a gateway drug for the neurotic.

-Rick

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Its the Pre-New Years Post!

Hoooooly crap i love Def Leppard. They’re just so outlandishly gaudy for a brittish rock band and really, everything was phallic about their video clips. Phallic is good! TAKE THAT FEMINISTS!

Anywho, Right from the get go, the “Gunter glieben glauchen globen” was totally sampled by the offspring over 10-15 years later for Pretty Fly for a white guy, which in itself, was a shithole of a song. Dont even get me started on how poxy the Offsprings later offerings were and how much “Son, I am Disappoint” i was.

The line “Its better to burn out, than to fade away” is a clear reference to Hey Hey, My My by Neil Young. Why anyone would want to quote a Canadian is beyond me, but simply, it sounds better coming from a band that had a drummer with only one arm, or a band that had a lead singer that shot himself in the head with a shotgun in the 90s.

The great thing about this clip though was that it was one that was made before Rick Allen lost his arm in a coke fuelled car accident. Nothing is more rock n roll than getting high as a kite on coke in the 80s and getting into a high speed car crash in your corvette, only to lose an arm when you’re a drummer. Its like it was written for TV!

Well, All in all, the tight pants and rising hair (compared to anything from the Hysteria album, their hair is pretty tame) will be sure to have caused some sort of permanent testicular damage and mistaken gender identities at the time, which is really what we’re after in any sort of video clip of the era.

-Rick

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