I'm going to see Queen (the Band, not the Monarch, nor the Tranny) on Friday Night!

My wife and I are going to watch (the remaining) Queen in concert in Melbourne this Friday night (or, that Friday night, if you are reading this after this Friday night, but that's neither here nor there, though the concert is in fact in Melbourne. There).


We were never fortunate enough to have watched Queen in their prime when Freddie Mercury was still alive and John Deacon was still slapping the bass and sporting that splendid bouffant of his (which was never the style of the time). And until I can get the right parts that I need cheap enough on ebay to fix this damn time machine of mine, we never will.

So, we have settled, and are excited, for the next best thing. No, not 'The Darkness' or 'Def Leppard', but 50% of Queen (Brian May and Roger Taylor), fronted by Adam Lambert and a nondescript bassist.

Upon preparing for Friday nights concert, I 'googled', 'yahoo'd', 'bing'd', 'baidu'd' and 'yandexed' (in no apparent order) all things Queen related while at work (or not at work if you are my manager, as I was far too busy doing 'work stuff' ... phew, that was a close one!).

I came across a review from Bernard Zuel on the SMH website of a concert on their current tour which took my interest, and threw it across the floor. Being far too busy at work (wink, wink) I undertook to replying to his review nonetheless. As you would expect, my reply was intellectual, witty, contextual, environmentally sensitive and etcetera, etc.

Unfortunately, my comments were never published - I can only assume I embarrassed Mr Zuel with my wordsmithmanship (it's a word if you know what it means, know what I mean? Yes).

I rang the SMH HQ to enquire, or inquire (dependant on your grasp of grammar, or lack of a sober editor such as mine), as to the reasoning of the omission of my comments to the article. A 'person' responded to my queries in a quasi Chinese accent "No thankyou". 

When I pressed further and asked to speak to Bernard Zuel, I was taken aback by a ghoulish voice that said "There is no Zuul, only Dana"*
(* if you loved this reference to 80's classic film "Ghostbusters", then you'll love (or be appalled at) my article about a potential Ghostbusters remake)

Despite none of the above telephonic conversation happening, I wrote another comment on this article to ask why my previous comment was discarded and left on the world wide web's cutting room floor. And that comment got published. It reads (actually, it would be better if you did the reading, and I'll just cut and paste it here, as follows):

Hi, was my earlier submission not worthy? I thought it was hysterically witty, and am in fact right now rolling around on the carpet in a fit of laughter as I recount what I typed (which is very hard to do while trying to balance this laptop and type to you as I am doing it).
Not really, I just wanted to embarrass my wife, by her reading what I wrote on the smh website - she finds what I think is funny "stupid".
Cheers, Ronnie

Ronnie Peace / Scotts Head / August 27, 2014, 5:50PM

As you can see it was not worth publishing nor reading (I should have warned you beforehand to save yourself the time, and myself the need to type this shallow non-apology), but was chosen over my literary work of art that was originally submitted.

For what it is worth, I will now do a brief review of Bernard Zuel's (or Dana's) review of the Queen concert. Basically, he gave the concert (3.5 stars) based on the following:

• Adam Lambert out-camped the absent Freddie Mercury (5 stars);
• They shortened Seven Seas of Rhye (minus 2 stars);
• They played I Want It All in full (plus 1 star);
• I Want It All is oafish (?);
• Oafish is bad (minus 2 stars);
• Adam was great (plus 1 star);
• Adam is not George Michael (plus 1 star);
• Didn't like Brian May's outfit (minus 1 star);
• It's Brian May's band now (plus half star).

From recollection, in my original comment I made a quip about putting $50 on Freddie to be able to come back and beat Adam in the next 'Out Camping Championships'. I can't recollect the wording, but it was no doubt bloody funny. As such, I drew a cartoon about it.



Photo: Actual image of the Annual Camping Out Competition (ACOC).
Winner takes home ACOC trophy.