Axis of live

Part One

I wrote a terrible bank ad that didn’t get me a place in Axis Ad School 1997, but the following year I wrote another terrible ad. Then in 1999 I got in with my ad about noise control. It showed a house wearing a giant pair of earmuffs. Perhaps I somehow knew I’d one day own two pairs of earmuffs for wearing around my children.

After one week in the classroom, in which an ad agency creative taught the class “the client is a brainless shithead”, and another shared his thoughts with a slide presentation titled “Out of my mind”, the remaining two months of Axis was placement in an ad agency to write ads from briefs from the school and, if we were lucky, live briefs.

My partner and I were placed at Y&R Auckland, where the creative director, Gordon Clarke - nicknamed “God" - had recently hired a new junior creative team (writer and art director). One of the juniors had got into Ad School with an ad about respecting parking wardens that showed a car taking up two parking spaces, and the headline “Who’s the arsehole now?” He showed early promise as a standup comedian when, noticing a small toy spider on a landline phone, he quipped “your phone’s bugged”, while standing up.

One day God gave me the best advice I’d ever received. I was a fragile, autistic 25 year-old and I told him I was “going through a rough patch” in my life. “Get over yourself,” he replied. Another time I showed him some soft lines I’d written for an ad aimed at people with road rage: ‘No, you need something like “Road rage is for fuckwits.”’ This inspired me to write an ad that showed a prison door, with the line “People are locking doors because of road rage.” God liked, and improved it: Doors are being locked because of road rage.

The final brief - and the one we were judged on - was to create a three-ad print campaign to encourage people to register their dogs. My brilliant art director - Hayden someone - and I made the three ads pictured. We won second place. The winning team wrote the line “It’s not the same when you’ve lost your dog.”, and I remember one of their ads pictured a book called 100 Dalmations. That team got hired, but we didn’t. Hayden and I separated and I continued to job hunt alone.

Unsuccessful, I decided to return to AUT to complete my three-year Diploma in Advertising. I took a paper called Copywriting. “Unusual name for something that’s meant to be original,” quipped the lecturer Jim Falconer. Jim was a retired creative who’d worked in ad agencies around the world. He told the class that when he’d worked in the USA he put the red “o” in Mobil, and that he wrote “Fresh Up - It’s got to be good for you” and the “Cats prefer Chef” jingle.

I dug Jim’s dry humour: he recalled being approached by a thug while stopped at traffic lights in South Africa, only a few days after he’d been robbed. The thug demanded money, to which Jim replied “I’ve already given.”

Jim showed us not only great ads - for example a print ad for the American Association of Advertising Agencies in response to claims that advertising was too manipulative, that showed a picture of Moses holding the two rocks inscribed with the Ten Commandments, and the line “However powerful a message is, some people may not buy it.” - but also great poems such as Marianne Williamson's “Our Deepest Fear” and Robert Frost's “The Road Not Taken”. Jim thought the latter was about the decision to become an artist. I think it’s about that etc.

To make ends meet I was kitchenhanding at two restaurants across the road from each other in the affluent suburb of Remuera. Late one night, cycling home from work I approached traffic lights, at which a gang of Remuera youths loitered, spilling out onto the road. I gave them minimal wide berth and one of them grabbed my handlebars, forcing me to stop. Then another guy mashed a slice of buttered bread into my face. Next thing I knew I was lying on the road hearing a woman yell from her car window “leave him alone!” One of the delinquents had punched me in the mouth and knocked me out - the only time in my life I’ve been KO’d. I got to my feet and yelled “get back, in Jesus’ name!” They went back to eating their lunch. White bred. It was too late for them to retrieve their buttered bread... they'd already given.

Next day I told work I couldn’t come in because I’d been assaulted. The day after that my colleagues saw my injury and said they’d expected it to be far worse. Perhaps instead of having a sick day I should’ve got over myself.

Articulated trailer

Perhaps because my algorithm senses that I’m “busy still saying please” (New Radicals), it's been hammering me with ads for Articulation Training. AT trains you to, for example, never answer thank you with “you’re welcome” (because, they say, it shows you don't value the help you just gave), and give a meaningful answer to the - they say - vastly underrated job interview question: “tell me about yourself”.

Feeling vaguely understood by my algorithm, I was half-tempted to enrol for AT. But then I read somewhere that after you sign up it's virtually impossible to unsubscribe. So it would seem that true articulation training is saying no to scams (and, if possible, to AI). You’re welcome.

Besides, the Youtube ad opens with 'Never, and I mean never open a meeting with "how are you?"'. But surely by repeating the word "never" you underrate its ability to work the first time lol

Back on track*

*Scott Blanks

I like the symmetry of my six-year break from comedy - one of my go-to positives when I occasionally beat myself up for "quitting" in 2017. I'm a slow learner: I'd quit comedy once before, only eight months after my first ever gig, at the ripe old age of 27. That break lasted three years, and when I returned to comedy I remember another "class of 2001" comedian (we'd both done 'New Faces' spots on TV2 Pulp Comedy) saying to me "you stuffed up." I guess I kinda did, but I was still young enough to kinda just bounce back. But now aged 50, four years after my autism diagnosis - with a side of anxiety - I sometimes feel like I have a mountain to climb.

But I like the symmetry of my stuffup: twice as long as my first break; Covid happened squarely in the middle of it (which would have neccesitated a short "break" from comedy anyway... another "positive"); the first time I came out of retirement I was 31, and the second time 49 - each age a year's distance from a milestone birthday. I know, barrel bottom scraping now!

And recently I was interested to learn that for six years starting in 2011 Larry David curbed his enthusiasm for creating his hit show, but got enthused again aged 70. And Richard Lewis, who starred in the show, died this year on my 50th birthday.

And John Cleese is set to revive Fawlty Towers!

I recently found myself telling someone that returning to comedy felt like coming out of a coma.

I was turned down for 2015 and 2016 New Zealand International Comedy Festival shows, but in 2017 was accepted for my sixth solo show - 'My Way or the Hemingway'. I did what I thought was my best ever show for five fun, well-attended nights in the Classic Studio. Also at the time I was getting regular club, pub, etc gigs.

But I was feeling a bit unfocused about comedy, which I think was partly because I'd recently returned to my day job teaching ESOL in a language school, which I was really enjoying. And because of my all-or-nothing thinking - which I later learned is one of my autism manifestations - I felt as though I had to choose between comedy and teaching.

Also I felt a little frustrated that I wasn't quite where I wanted to be in my comedy career after 14 years at it.

I slipped away quietly from comedy, telling only Scott at The Classic, and a few others. I spent nights on the couch reading philosophy, history, theology, and linguistics. Instinctively I knew I needed an education - beyond the diplomas in advertising and Christian leadership I gained in my 20s.

As well as an education, I also just needed to grow up. At that stage of my life, living in comedyland was holding me in a bit of an infantile mindset. But for those six years I was not only still a comedian, but also, in a sense, becoming a better comedian; I've returned to the stage with a new conviction, maturity, and intentionality, and I feel like I'm selling my lines better than ever... watching old footage of myself I can see that my style was a little too passive. I still like to slow things down on stage**, and make the audience lean in to hear me, but I now realise that not every crowd is going to afford me that luxury, and I need to fight harder to win over tougher crowds.

By 2017 I'd been married five years, and had a toddler and a baby. Six years later I'd been through (and mostly come out the other side of) some marriage problems, and developed a lot more patience, selflessness, and capacity. Despite some of the old neuroses that seem to be inherent in doing standup returning, I now feel more alive, which is making me a much funner dad and husband... all of which would suggest that I'm now “back on track."

**I think partly why I like to slow things down on stage is because I generally find life to be quite fast-paced and frenetic, and sometimes overwhelming. This can easily clog my one-lane country road for receiving/sending info/stimulus from the outside world into my head. A neurotypical person has more like an eight-lane highway.

48 SK8

Recently I read that dropping in is to ramp skateboarding what ollie-ing is to flat-ground skateboarding.

I learnt to do the former 32 years after the latter.

I bought my first wide skateboard in 1986 for AU$110.

Aussie surf culture ruled, and one day at the mall my parents rocked my world when they bought me a florescent yellow, pink, and blue sweatshirt front-printed with a brand name which escapes me. I put it with my white “Beau Geste” mudflap cap and pink Lightning Bolt tee on my wardrobe shelf reserved for “surf” clothing that I wore around landlocked Canberra.

I’d been saving for a Tamiya remote-control car that cost $150, but was seduced one day in the surf shop by a matt white skateboard splashed with another forgettable, fluro brand name – “Reflex” – that I could afford to buy straightaway. Had I carried on saving and bought the Tamiya instead, would I now be as taken with RC cars as I am with skateboarding, and a better goal setter and achiever?

Parallel universe stuff.

A few months later Reflex was loaded into a shipping container, and we returned to New Zealand. I sold Reflex to my brother, who spray-painted it florescent yellow and, underneath, painted black stickmen chasing an animal with spears. He also blew my mind one day in the garage when he popped an ollie.

By 1989 the skateboard craze was cranking, and I worked my two-week school holiday in a chicken hatchery to save for a new board. Obviously I’d forgotten about RC cars, because on payday I walked into Cheapskates Henderson and dropped $340 on a Santa Cruz Jeff Grosso deck, Independent trucks, wheels, bearings, tail guard, nose guard, and rails. That’s more than double what I paid for a new Santa Cruz complete in 2021! Maybe because it weighed double (then add to that the weight of my crepe-soled Nomad school shoes that I often skated in, and I’m surprised I got airborne!).

But ollie I did, up the curb on our dead-end street. Then we moved house to the countryside, miles from anywhere skateable. Fortunately though, every morning my dad drove my brother and me with our skateboards to asphalted Waitakere train station, where we boarded a virtually empty train to Avondale College; we skated the aisle, altering our speed relative to the ground. We learnt physics while other kids were still rubbing sleep from their eyes.

The lunchtime skaters congregated around a plywood quarter-pipe that someone had brought to school, and among the Knievels launching off it was Scott Lyons, a pimply, stocky, mulleted king of the jungle. He pioneered bike inner-tube footstraps. I was just trying to ollie or no-comply up a nearby curb in my Nomads.

No train station, train, or concrete at our next house, but at least our street was paved, and on it was a primary school where we stashed a long, solid piece of wood to ollie up onto and railslide (boardslide) on.

Then I was desperate for Doc Martins, so sold my board (to my brother?) and bought some brown low-cuts. Decades passed, over which I noticed the old whale-tail deck shape morph into the current, straight-side “popsicle”, and last year I got back in the game with a second-hand Shifty for $40. Last Christmas my wife and I bought our two young boys 22-inch cruiser boards, but then our eldest started using my board for Young Guns skate school. So on payday I went to Boardertown and bought myself a new complete (I can play with my son’s RC car anytime).

New Lynn bowl is where I first dropped in (fell off the second time), and from there progressed to the waist-high ramp at Valonia skatepark, then the Waterview nipple-high.

Lines

Ever since I could stand I've had the world at my feet.

Chinese junk now refers to what's inside the ship.

Every room in a rest home is a restroom.

Confucius say: bear loose in chemistry class creates pandammonium.

Confucius say: toilet seat unnecessary if making stool.

Confucius say: racing mind not fast asleep.

Why did the chicken cross the road?
It saw the jay walking.

Which came first, chicken or egg?
Eggplant.


One's lot in life is a lot.

Parenting will age you - you choose what age.

Even better than an unputdownable book is one that sleep makes you drop.

Dazzle dazzle giant sun
wondering is now not fun
you're a close star in my eye
stare too long and I might die


Saturday

Clear afternoon sky,
ice cream wind
hot caramel sundae

Pain in the rear

As usual my militant body clock rang at 4.46am, and I tried in vain to hit snooze. After delaying the inevitable for 14 minutes I turned on the light and resumed looking for my beige travel money belt, a search I’d quit on last thing the night before. I quickly found it under my bed, which meant I’d be able to carry my phone with me on my bicycle, to upload my ride to the Strava app. Before zipping away my phone I used its flashlight to illuminate the barn door combination lock, before wheeling out my bike.

As is so often the case when I run or ride in the morning, it is still technically nighttime, and I feel slightly unnatural walking, scantily clad, down darkened driveway past my neighbor’s bedroom window where they are exercising their gift of being able to sleep past stupid o’clock. But I do love mornings, and mostly I find it a treat to step outside and expose my pasty thighs to moon or starlight.

I hoisted myself onto my blue Bauer Momentum and rolled out onto the smooth, black asphalt of my quiet, suburban street. The main road was extra quiet for early Saturday morning due to the covid-19 lockdown, and I turned and began pedaling up Great North Road to where it starts gently descending towards the start of Ash Street.

I’d forgotten to take a good look at the stars from my driveway, and now couldn’t because of the bright streetlights, and I couldn’t be bothered stopping. I did momentarily look up, but the thought of how stupid I’d feel if I crashed my bike on an empty, four-lane road caused me to quickly revert to conventional means of navigation.

On the other side of the road a police car drove by, and I did a quick mental checklist of how I might be breaking the law. I say “might” because I still don’t know if it’s illegal to cycle in the dark without a front light. But, hey, at least I have a vigorously flashing rear light, which the police would have seen when they looked back to check if I at least had a vigorously flashing rear light, making me not worth imprisoning.

Unbeknownst to me, there lay on the other side of the road something of greater concern.

On through the giant, ghost intersection that marked the beginning of Titirangi Road, and the hill climb into the Waitakere Ranges – my languid, lockdown legs and lungs keenly anticipating the resistance.

Keen to keep my ride under 40 minutes, I turned around about one kilometer shy of the summit, and began screaming downhill. The roadside electronic speed display awoke to show 45km/hr.

Ash Street traffic is normally heavy, and out of habit I rode quite close to the curb. Suddenly I felt a mild bump and realized I’d run over something that had attached itself to my rear tyre. Then I heard a flapping sound and felt both a lack of air cushioning ... and deflated.

Crap. My second puncture in three days. I pulled over and began running my fingertips round the tyre to find the offending article. These things can sometimes be hard to find ... and sometimes they are a ruddy great 2.5-inch nail! I pulled it out, uploaded my ride (12.6km, 30 minutes), and began the two-kilometer walk home, both wondering how a lame nail had so accurately and effectively found its target (had it been a trap laid by a schoolboy?.. I know I used to dream up such schemes), and mildly berating myself for not riding 3cm wider of the curb. “Oh well, I’d enjoyed a long period of inflation," I figured, "so I guess was now due a couple of flatties.” Yes, plural. The other one had been on my other bike, a newer road bike that, after he'd stored for eons in my folks’ garage, my Christchurch-based bro-in-law had recently given me.

The nail pierced the tyre side wall and both sides of the inner tube, so I took the punctured tube off my other bike, repaired it, and paired it with the holy tyre - which had more tread - on my Bauer. A nice wee activity to do with the kids of a lockdown Sunday morning.

Lying under trees

The city screams at me to race,
Buses snarl
Signs grip me, draining their venom right down
to the logo
I walk with a scowl, and judge other scowls
I breathe in greed and shut out need
I carry it on my shoulders;
shallow breaths

Tilt my brain
Blue sky flood
Exchanged with an old woman ahead of me on the bus



The time to write will come

I give you my latest poem
as good as any I’ve read

always the last I’ll write

poetry is the bird on the windowsill

that appears

when nothing could be further from your mind,
when you least feel like a poet

by grace the bird appears when finally

I put pen down and start living.

if you’re moving in step with life,
giving as you should
taking as you should,

leaving behind as you should
remembering as you should

..then your eyes will be open to the soft landing
of sparrows' feet at your window