January 30, 2012 – 11:36 am
THANK GOD FOR MENTAL ILLNESS (Frankie – 2011)
After watching the music documentary Dig! I was checking out The Brian Jones Town Massacre. Wild front-man Anton Newcombe had called their 1996 release Thank God For Mental Illness and the title fascinated me. It was about the most audacious thing I’d ever seen. Who would dare celebrate mental illness in anyway? Mental illness was the thing of dreary pamphlets and scary people on buses, not critically acclaimed lo-fi albums from the American underground. Even if the title was being ironic, glib, sarcastic or otherwise, it genuinely encouraged me. My life was defined by psychological disorders and as a survivor, it’s something I wanted to wear as a badge of pride, not …
January 14, 2012 – 12:44 pm
1971’s Harold and Maude is a twisted coming of age story and wildly eccentric romantic comedy. Harold is a deadpan and detached young man living in a mansion with his overbearing socialite mother. His favourite game is pretending to kill himself, either by hanging, fake blood in the bath or floating facedown in the swimming pool. His preferred pastime is attending funerals. It’s here that he meets Maude, a vivacious free spirit who steals cars and sees the world as her playground. She’s cheeky, beguiling and interested in Harold. She’s also seventy nine.
Thus begins this profoundly off-beat and darkly quirky tale, as Harold bounces between his suffocating home life and the dazzling dimension Maude paints for him. While his …
December 6, 2011 – 9:57 am
I’m not afraid of many things – pit toilets, wasps & developing schizophrenia mostly, but last year I developed a new fear that trumped them all. At 30, I didn’t think I could still be afraid of monsters, but alas, I discovered a beast in my own city, so creepy and insidious that I’d cross the street to avoid it, and bury my face in my hands when driving past. Once home, the image of this faceless demon, writhing and cavorting with wicked vigour would blind my mind’s eye. The garish colours. The subhuman movements. The horror! Was I the only one going through this torment? Was there anyone else who understood my repulsion to this advertising anomaly? Cue David …
December 6, 2011 – 9:45 am
When I was four I must have bumped into the fridge one too many times as Mum rushed me to the local optometrist. One of my earliest memories is liking the touch of his hands on my face as he fitted my first pair of frames. I was severely short sighted, and as the years went on the lenses only got thicker. As a lifelong member of Four Eyes United (we’re taking the term back), I can tell you it’s a proud society, whose members know the sacrifices they’ve made to earn the ‘square flair’ they enjoy today. Recently there’s been a battle for membership, and I’m championing to keep it exclusively to those who have been diagnosed with Visual …
December 6, 2011 – 9:43 am
In Year 12 my friends and I went through a phase of reminiscing about our childhoods, in particular the cartoons we used to watch on the ABC. Of all the shows there was one that elicited the most passionate reaction. The Mysterious Cities Of Gold. Unlike other kids shows, the series was only screened once, and we had equally foggy memories. We pieced it together like detectives, remembering iconic images such as the gold condor, medallions, and the African dress of Tao. Post-school I continued my mission to track it down, traversing a labyrinth of anecdotes and bootleg tip-offs. In 2008 I found the re-released DVD set in J-Mag’s freebies bin – a surprising and sudden end to my quest. …
September 21, 2011 – 1:15 pm
As Video Hits aired its final episode last week, I asked myself – how will our children learn about sex? Primary school assemblies won’t be the same without a generation of tweens emulating Rhianna’s pelvic thrusts and singing Sex in the air I don’t care / I love the smell of it. How will young boys find black misogynists to aspire to, so they can learn about honeyz in the club and that it’s okay to wear sunglasses inside?
Advertising is about catching folks with their guard down, and every Saturday morning it was a massacre. The dowdy crowd, armed with pyjamas and cereal, were probed by strobes, sprayed with hot-synth and force fed Freudian imagery by a slick snake …
September 21, 2011 – 12:29 pm
In 2002 I wrote a song called ‘Mcrock’ about the commercialisation of music. It included the lines:
Band names are brand names
Hit singles are radio jingles
Listen to my pitch
To scratch the advertising itch.
The rest is a list of sponsorship wordplays suggesting a reality where bands could be branded like sporting teams.
Limp Biscuit think Arnotts
Weezer Quit Australia
Lucksmiths think The Dicksmiths
Pink think Crayola
And so on. I’d just read The Sell In by Craig Matheson, a book about the commercial success of Australia’s alternate bands in the 90’s. It introduced me to the business side of music, and took some gloss off my idolised image of rock gods, painting them as real people, battling …
September 21, 2011 – 11:54 am
Last year Tony Abbot declared that women’s virginity was a ‘precious gift.’ This wording, coming from Mr red Speedos “Stop The Scrote” himself was enough to have us stewing in our juices and spewing in our mouths. There were several things shady about it; one was the commodification of women’s bodies and the other was the sexist omittance of male virginity from the equation. Surely it’s time society took a spoonful of Equal when it comes to male virginity. Is it worth anything to anyone? Here’s a joke: Women’s virginity ‘the gift’ comes in a white box with a red ribbon, you open it carefully and inside you find a Faberge Egg. It’s handcrafted, delicate and something you’ll cherish for …
July 26, 2011 – 12:20 pm
My first memory of music is listening to Popcorn by Hot Butter. I’m standing beside Nan and Pop’s ‘Stereo Sonic’ entertainment deck with black sponge headphones wrapped around my noggin. I load a cassette into the deck and press down on the chunky metallic button. The oceanic tape hiss fills with a sci-fi whine, followed by a warbly synth waddle of baroque alien ducks and the novelty combustion of a robotic, whistle-ready melody.
I sit mesmerised, staring at a yellow and brown swirl print cushion. These sounds are colour to a blind man. An aurora to a caveman. A Christmas and birthday imagination sandwich. Cerebral sorcery that fits like a tshirt and springs like a trampoline. Music was shaking hands …
July 26, 2011 – 12:06 pm
The first cut is the deepest, and Radiohead’s Creep cut me in a big way. It was one of my first experiences of a rock band. I watched the film clip, mesmerised. The picked tremolo notes rang like a macabre musical box while the chorus cut through like a chainsaw. Who were these pale, effeminate men, slinging and scrunching their way through such a pretty tune? In the stage lights Thom Yorke looked alien. His face contorted in ecstasy and angst. Johnny Greenwood hid behind a wall of noise and fringe, revving his guitar like a lawnmower.
When asked about Creep in 1993, Yorke said, “I have a real problem being a man in the ’90s. Any man with any …
July 26, 2011 – 11:46 am
In Grade 4 a new girl was introduced to our class. She was Aboriginal. I’ll never forget how dramatic her skin looked against her yellow dress and matching socks. Our class sat stunned as she walked into the room. Most of us had never met an Indigenous person before. She looked like she had been crying and her expression was locked in fear. She slunk into her chair, lay her head down on the desk and buried it in her arms. She stayed like this for the rest of the class. Some boys up the back dubbed her “Emu”. The next day she was gone. We never saw her or another Aboriginal student again.
This took place in my home …
May 12, 2011 – 2:23 pm
After watching the music documentary Dig! I was checking out The Brian Jones Town Massacre. Wild front-man Anton Newcombe had called their 1996 release Thank God For Mental Illness and the title fascinated me. It was about the most audacious thing I’d ever seen. Who would dare celebrate mental illness in anyway? Mental illness was the thing of dreary pamphlets and scary people on buses, not critically acclaimed lo-fi albums from the American underground. Even if the title was being ironic, glib, sarcastic or otherwise, it genuinely encouraged me. My life was defined by psychological disorders and as a survivor, it’s something I wanted to wear as a badge of pride, not shame.
I’m annoyed by how little empathy there …
May 12, 2011 – 2:22 pm
When people ask me what I do I’m reluctant to say “comedian.” The job-title carries with it certain social ramifications. In Australia, the land of the larrikin, it seems such an audacious claim. Mate I know everyone’s a comedian, but I’m foolish enough to expect someone to pay for my services. When I do own up, it’s met with a surprised smile somewhere between delight and pity. First comes the line “So tell us a joke” followed by the awkward pause when I fail to launch into a diatribe comparing Julia Gillard to April O’Neil from Ninja Turtles. If I’m lucky I’ll be asked “where do you get your material?” to which I’ll answer “my life I guess.” If the …
May 12, 2011 – 2:20 pm
Computer says that Cool began in Africa in the 15th century when a tribal leader began wearing an expressionless mask not only during times of stress, but also in times of pleasure. It was dubbed “mystic coolness”. This “artistically conscious interweaving of serious and play” evolved through the African Americans who brought it to the U.S. in the 1940s via Jazz clubs. It was dubbed Bohemia. Followers followed, copiers copied and scruffy preppies with half a novel now had an excuse to talk to women. Later, James Dean smoked a cigarette, Elvis moved his hips, The Rolling Stones got out of bed and white Cool was born, or more accurately, adopted. This borrowed swagger was on-sold to capitalism, who …
May 12, 2011 – 2:19 pm
On December 12 I was given the challenge not to say anything negative or bitch about anyone for thirty days. When I heard about this I cried. When I told my close friends they laughed. It was like challenging a sportsman not to state the obvious or a teenager not to use the word ‘like.’ As an artist, whinging about the output of my peers is as much a part of my vocabulary as swearing and self pity. Just how much so I wasn’t to realise until the pending days.
Day 1 – We all know the law of being asked not to do something, suddenly it’s all your brain can muster. My first challenge came during a soundcheck with …
