This is Ben. He is 37, married with 2.5 kids and he has had more jobs than I’ve had showers. He spent the first year of his life living in a jungle in Indonesia but moved back to Melbourne with his family and pretty much entered the workforce straight away. The child labour laws were quite relaxed in the 80’s and as a kid he not only washed cars for the dolla bills but also worked in market stalls, in a factory printing t-shirts for Target and also sold Christmas trees out of a car park. At 15 he started a computer software empire through the trading post – often having to wag school so he could keep up with the demand – and was eventually blacklisted for not being ‘fully legit’. But you can’t keep a workhorse down and Ben bounced back with a small women’s wear shop, providing styling and fashion advice as only an adolescent teenage boy could. Since then he has undertaken an array of odd jobs; tutor (was paid in ice cream), a pizza delivery boy, wholesaled cameras to milk bars,suit salesman, builders labourer, sold designer ‘Kelvin Cline’ glasses and worked as an unqualified music teacher, a painter, a banker, computer assembler and an actor (was paid in beer). But after a construction job based at the glamorous poo farm near Frankston, he thought enough of this sh*t and went to on to be a 9-5 corporate – which he says is his favourite job by far. Worst? Working in the dairy at Coles ‘I quit after two shifts, it was fcking sh*t’.
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4 - 6 Nov Crown Oaks Day @ Flemmo (3 Nov only) - will the spring racing carnival ever end? Emirates Stakes Day @ Flemmo (5 Nov only) - guess not. The Odd Couple @ MTC (5 Nov - 17 Dec) - a play written about Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith (they're both totally straight guys). The Melbourne Design Market @ Fed Sq (6 Nov) - literally someone design me onesie that is dedicated to Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act 2. Espresso Martini Festival @ Meat Market (5 Nov) - for the classiest of the drunkiest. Daylesford Macedon Open Studios @ Daylesford (1-30 Nov) - studios. open ones. La Dolce Vita @ King Valley (9-10 Nov) - I would bet on this horse if it were a horse of course. Bendigo Blues and Roots Festival @ Bendigo (3-6 Nov) - get some roots and some blues this weekend. Aus Music Festival (31 Oct - 1 Nov) @ Warrnambool - wow there are some high expectations with a name like that. Pax @ MCEC (4-6 Nov) - a battle of nerdy' thumbs. Richard Dolan @ Hawthorn Library (8 Nov) - the world's leading UFOlogist on his first ever Australian tour confirms all the things Moulder and Scully couldn't. Bachela-la-la @ Butterfly Club - reality TV meets musical comedy in this interactive dating show which couldn't be a more perfect Tinder for moi. The Jeep Melbourne Cup Polo @ Werribee (6th Nov) - jeeps driven by horses dressed in Bali knock off polo shirts zoom around the Werribee mansion shouting abuse in French. The winner gets to spend a night with the two Irish ghosts who dwell within. FACT: Werribee Mansion is haunted - I used to work with a girl who said she was in the dining room alone when 20 glasses flew off the shelf and smashed on the ground. She quit the next day. The City Speaks @ ACCA (7-20 Nov) - and she sounds like she has had one too many coffees / cocktails / cronuts. Oooh Steven Rhall is involved. Well it's going to sound like a damn shame if you miss it. The Tallis Scholars @ Arts Centre (6 Nov) - described as the original rock stars of the Renaissance these guys are going to knee slide in their pantaloons, kick over your goblets and throw a little-person at your face. FACT: wealthy Italians of the Renaissance had areas on their property where midgets lived in a zoo type environment, for their viewing pleasure. Souvenirs for the Unwitting @ Mailbox Art (3 Nov onwards) - also known as pregnancy. Vegan and Vegetarian Festival @ Food Truck Park @ Preston (4-6 Nov) - stop eating our friends from this weekend onwards. Waterways of Daylesford @ 45 downstairs (8-19 Nov) - the rabbits from Watership Down find a new home in the tree-spa and Alla's husband paints General Woundwort (pre-dog fight).
Eat / Drink by The Sprink THE DATE - for those just tuning in, after profiling Guillermo as a Maddawg of Melbourne I was bombarded with 100's of emails asking if I was physically molesting him (and if not, why not), so because all you Sprinks are pervs and like me can appreciate a nice piece of hot man cake, I got the idea it would be kewl to auctioned him off for a date to the highest bidder. Without his permission. The winner was Tamara who I featured last week. So, as promised I went along on their night with a laptop and burning ears to review their date for The Sprinkler family's pleasure.. Notes unedited below. So it was awkward. Being a third wheel isn’t normal on a date. Tam was 5min early, G was 2min early. A good start. Convo began with me asking a few questions - about me. Cos it’s the only interesting thing to talk about lets be real. Yeah I like sci-fi books, I’m into cats, oh I was nearly on Survivor nearly also on The Bachelor.. then at the same time they both told me to shut up they didn’t care. Right, sorry team. Tam kicked off the main Qs – G where are you from then G rambled a bit and I stopped listening cos he has one of those velvet voices that lulls you to sleep. He was a tad quieter than usual and Tam was the same. They then started talking about Tinder, dating and asking people out IRL. Then the convo kinda stopped. There was a long silence. I heard a cricket. We all kind of looked at the floor and collectively wished it would swallow us up. The three of us put the awwwwww in awkward. Then G suggested I bring out The Questions. I had pulled together a list of Q’s you should probably not ask on a first date and given there was literally nothing to lose at this point it definitely seemed like a good idea. First: do you believe in God? To which they both said yes but no but yes but kind of energy or something but I'm Jewish, but there is something out there but yeah but no. A collective agreement I think. Who should earn more money? PFft stupid question. How many babies do you want? They had an argument over this one. G was like ‘eh however many we have’ and Tam was all about filling a Toorak tractor. Do you believe in aliens? A SOLID yes from them both with G revealing he wants to get abducted and Tam saying that is her worst nightmare. Both agreed they were looking forward to the apocalypse and both certain they would survive. Who last broke your heart? When did you last have s3x? How often should you hang out with each other’s families? Should you smack kids? Then there was flirting. Not cos of the smacking but because we were 3 drinks in and you can’t really not flirt around these two they are both so damn pretty. There was some giggling, compliments given and they both glared at me while the other wasn’t looking . I don’t get hints so it wasn’t until G hissed in my ear ‘Can you please go already?’ that I thought I should bounce.
