MUSINGS - When it comes to the CRUNCH...

Once upon a time, I played squash for Wales. My mum is still a world class vintage player. I throw a mean frisbee, whack a wicked ping pong, toss a good salad. I've been known to dabble in Tai Chi - mainly bend over, asshole to the sun, sphincter warming at sunrise on my roof deck. If I get writer's block, yogic-inversion is a tactic I employ. I also enjoy spinning... like a Dervish...when the Sufi vibe hits me. But gymania - abs, squats, ceps, thrusts - was an alien concept for a Welsh lass used to a daily work out dancing naked, singing into her hairbrush-mic to extremely loud, unrepeatable music.

When I settled into LA LA land at the beginning of 2008, I discovered an African dance class at the infamous gym on Sunset - Crunch. It is wicked. It totally revolutionized the image I had built up about institutionalized "fitness culture". Don't get me wrong, I was still in shock after seeing treadmills with TVs; gay men in their throngs, love muscles gleaming, picking each other up over weight machines; emaciated personal trainers who need to eat some breakfast; camel toes congregating in pilates classes at dawn to compare groove jam; and B-list celebs showering off their fading careers...But I'm happily surprised at how much fun I'm having...I mean, it isn't every day you get to jog next to "The Fly"; share a steam with the hookers from 'Crazy Girl' and watch the producer of 'Scrubs' skip a marathon around the club while resembling an epileptic undergoing exorcism...

'Crunch' is everything my beloved friends back home might suspect would suck me into a downward spiral of cosmetic obsession and physical perfection correction, but instead I've discovered African dance - shaking my batwings to live drums every Sunday morning while flamboyant, sweaty men flex their toned bits through the glass. It rocks. They say, "don't judge a book by its cover" - Crunch is that book that, from the perspective of a naive sheep-shaggin' Welsh chick, looks like a turd with fake boobs in lycra. On closer inspection, it's just a turd like every other turd. After many years of frequenting yoga classes filled with self-conscious, angry, middle class posers repeating the 'namaste' mantra without having a friggin' clue how to translate Sanskrit, it's almost refreshing to be in a happily gay gym where no one's pretending not to be superficial...

© 2008 G3

MUSIC - Rappin' in Weapons!

You can view Weapons videos here and also check us out live on Weapon's Myspace page.

We shot 'Love Is Thunder' in the underground dungeons of London where the stench of corpse debris, coupled with PMT, made me feel...delicate...



Blackline Ninja is my favorite Weapons video. We had such fun shooting this. I was clad in a HOT leather jet blue biker catsuit and the crotch ripped on the first take as I performed a Wing-Chun kick ;-) On the second take, my beloved brother JG whacked me in the face with his mic and chipped my tooth. I think the vid catches the energy of the band well. Enjoy!

Black Line Ninja
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Death Of A Nation was a classic - we were approached by some kick ass students in Bristol who did this on zero budget and pulled it off real sweet. The best part of the shoot was throwing plastic tarantulas on bassist Pete Cherry to help him overcome his fear of spiders. The make-up is a little twisted, but the energy is infectious and the lyrics say it all...Michael Moore, Bill Hicks, George Carling - this one's for you!

Death of a Nation
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