August 6, 2008 – 9:52 pm
(This piece originally appeared in Frankie #22)
After my Pop passed away last year I found myself wearing his clothes. This was nothing new. Back in 1998 when I first discovered op shopping I realised I had an exclusive treasure trove right under my nose. During a regular weekend jaunt to Nan & Pop’s I asked politely if I could inspect their wardrobe, and with the excitement of one passing through the ‘Staff Only’ door at Salvos, initiated a gangly, late teens version of dress ups. Whenever a fellow second-hand droog complimented me on my retro jacket it was with great pride that I said it was my Pop’s.
Adorned in a full set of his clothes, I strolled through …
August 6, 2008 – 8:25 pm
There’s never a more vulnerable time in one’s life than when they step outside the door of the hairdresser’s. As a guy, the thought running through my head is almost always the same – ‘TOOOOO SSHHOOOORRRRTTTTT!!!’ Having abruptly cropped hair leaves your big goofy head exposed, like your face’s version of being caught with its pants down. With the central HQ of a fringe and straggly side bits gone, there’s nowhere for your forehead and ears to hide. You are destined to wander the streets, cheekbones freezing, trying to subtly peer at yourself in shop windows and jiggle your hair about like a crazed Mother setting the dinner table for Christmas.
You could be forgiven for thinking that hairdresser’s just …
August 5, 2008 – 8:27 pm
It’s 7:13am Monday morning and I’m sprawled in my warm blue sheets having a dream. My girlfriend and I are sitting outside a beachside café while an aerial battle is going on. Two squadrons of about fifteen planes a piece are locked in frenetic oscillation, their khaki green bodies murky against the pale sky. Like the jerky direction of a Hollywood film, it’s hard to tell who the teams are. I sit entranced as they swoop, spin and somersault around each other, bullets and missiles cannoning in all directions, leaving wisps of grey morning smoke.
I pay attention to one plane in particular who’s underwing has the most foreboding set of weapons. It has been coasting along the skyline, away …
August 4, 2008 – 8:30 pm
By the hammer of Thor! I have tinnitus. The alarm bell of my vulnerability is ringing in my ears. I’ve let the team down. I’ve hurt myself. I’ve quite possibly permanently damaged one of the most precious and valuable parts of my body. I’ve fucked up. (This is me being positive.)
A friend gave me a good analogy of Tinnitus. In some dormant volcanoes there are trees that grow inside. When the volcano blows, the trees are flattened, and never grow again. Inside your ear there are thousands of tiny hair follicles that pick up sound. When you are exposed to loud music, they can be damaged. Sufferers of Tinnitus are left with the ghost of audio haunting their ear …
April 16, 2008 – 12:20 am
They say when you’re lying on your deathbed thinking back over your life, you won’t be worrying about what job you had or how much money you made, but about the people you loved, in particular your one true love. Failing that there’s always your greatest races on Mario Kart 64. Such is the divine fun of what I am calling the greatest console game of all time.
Firstly, I’m not a gamer, but could have easily been. The last console I owned was an Amstrad CPC 464 green screen when I was fourteen that loaded games up on cassette. (I’m not in my mid 40’s, I just started way behind everyone else. I was playing Bombjack when other kids …
April 15, 2008 – 12:19 am
I tip the last drops of water into my mouth and rinse out my glass, steering the tap lever up and left. Fluid thunders out of the pipe like tubular ocean – the Amazonian sound-spray filling my ears. The weight of a hundred micro-storms splice over my hand as if my knuckles were river-rocks. I stare into the black drain-hole as the raindrop tapestry pours like a dragon-wound, sluicing in with dish grit, and dissipating like a star. It’s been eight earth seconds and only now are the artificial cogs of man-churned electricity effecting the water. Gradually the temperature rises – so gradually my hand is deceived and the atmosphere of my skin throbs like a dessert. I grab the …
April 14, 2008 – 12:22 am
Who hasn’t watched Fight Club and thought: “Yeah – maybe if I smacked my friends around a bit I’d alleviate some of this pedestrian, inner-city tension. Maybe I am getting a bit soft. Have I ever even been in a fight? When was the last time I tried a ninja kick at book club, or a full nelson at Friday night drinks?” Naturally, you’d never follow through. Fighting is, as the aforementioned movie realistically depicts, quite bloody. We’ve all got work and school tomorrow, who can afford the black eyes and savaged teeth? No, Fight Club would just never work here, fortunately I’ve thought of a consumer friendly ‘Fight Club lite’ variation.
It’s called Food Slap Club. The rules are …
February 11, 2008 – 5:05 pm
For a change this year I spent New Year’s Eve on the foreshore of my hometown Burnie, Tasmania. While the lengthy stares from primitive locals and a muddy mix on the Bon Jovi cover band (Bad Medicine) were downers, the midnight fireworks were a plus. It doesn’t matter where you are, geographically or mentally, fireworks are always a good idea.
The ripe whiff of gunpowder and atomic whip cracks send your spirits down a psychedelic wormhole into the victory lap of your childhood. Pixel grenades paint bomb the dimensions in rainbow basted electro pastels. There’s a synergy in the synapses, as the cartoon factory of your memories explodes inside a mirror ball of kaleidoscopic buckshot. Your gaze centred on a …
January 8, 2008 – 3:25 pm
This article was originally published in Frankie Magazine #20. It was in response to the man myth – the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.
This saying was first coined by the United States Chief Medical Surgeon Ernie Monbulk in Connecticut in 1943. At the time he was giving a lecture to a group of medical interns, in a stifling lecture theatre during an intense heat wave. What he actually meant to say was ‘the way to a man’s heart is through the pulmonic valve,’ however, it was such a hot day! His mind got to drifting, and, as documented in his 1963 memoir ‘The forty year old surgeon,’ at the time of his infamous blunder he …
January 7, 2008 – 3:19 pm
This article was originally published in Frankie Magazine #20.
Regardless of your geographic tendency or sociological demographic, by the time you hit early adulthood, you will have had the misfortune of spending a Friday night at ‘The Cliché.’ The Cliché is a chain of nightclubs around Australia that use the same dingy decor and audio aftershave from DJ Lobotomy to attract a specific clientele. A Starbucks for sleazes.
Breath on nose. Hands through hair. Eyes on boobs. Foot in mouth. For honest, underground kids, the reality of the pub sleaze is a distant memory that no indie safehouse could ever rekindle. Or could it? Perhaps there’s a force at play more brazen and corrupt than any Dazza in a singlet, …
January 6, 2008 – 3:13 pm
I started my love affair with op shops back in Grade 12, when I sprinted into our local St Vinnies to hide from some bullies. It was exactly like the scene in The NeverEnding Story, except that instead of a certain hardcover storybook altering my destiny, it was a burnt orange cardigan. The kingdom of my fashion was crumbling – after years of honouring surf and basketball brands, I felt the ‘nothing’ of realisation that I didn’t actually surf or play ball sports. As I buttoned up the cable-stitch wool blend of the home-knitted cardi, an aesthetic warmth flowed through my bones – finally, clothing that endorsed my real idols, Beck and John Lennon, and reflected my sensitive ‘raised by …
January 5, 2008 – 3:11 pm
This article was originally published in Frankie Magazine #18. It was also published in The Sex Mook (Vignette Press 2007).
One Night Stands – the methadone clinics for intimacy junkies. For many, this grope on a rope mentality is too depraved to consider. It conjures up conjugal imagery of a greasy footballer and a Midori soaked netball specialist in a soft porn yawn. For us fragile art-folk, it’s either long term relationships or thoughtful glances followed by conversations about bands, a kiss on the cheek and a cryptic Myspace message if you’re lucky. Right?
That was my assumption as I found myself dumped in the bacteria filled wading pool of singledom, at the end of a seven year waterslide of …
January 4, 2008 – 3:09 pm
This article was originally published in Frankie Magazine #18
A reliable source (girl in pub) once told me that Astro Boy was originally set in 1995. Whether or not it’s true, it does reinstall the notion that we probably have a right to feel ripped off by the ‘future.’ Twelve years on from that fictional target, and I see no flying cars (Barina’s with wings never took off, didn’t they learn anything from skateboards?) and we’re no closer to living on mars, although I’d like to forward the conspiracy theory that the governments are trying to slowly turn Earth into Mars in a hope to better understand its atmosphere. The 80’s TV show ‘Beyond 2000’ planted the seeds of a …
January 3, 2008 – 3:08 pm
What’s that saying? ‘There’s always someone better off than you.’ No, that’s not it. But you know what I mean – ‘there’s always going to be someone ahead of you being more successful.’ Hmmm. That’s a bit clumsy. I think it was one of my Nan’s sayings. ‘You’ve got nothing.’ Yeah, that’s it. Admittedly she wasn’t well at the time and was saying it to everyone, but it rang true yesterday.
I went around to my friend Josh’s house to watch DVD’s. In a boldly idiosyncratic gesture, I grabbed some leftover kangaroo steak (it’s the new beef) and vegetables and put them in a plastic bag with intent to cook over at his house. I added butter, salt and parsley …
January 2, 2008 – 3:07 pm
Facebook. Don’t ignore it. Don’t try and fight it. You can’t escape. There’s nowhere to run. It owns you. It knows where you live. It’s ferocious and intelligent and you’d better let it zombie bite you and start up a game of scrabble or you’ll be the one at home playing with your abacus while everyone’s partying like its 2008.
Most of us are in three technological camps. Those that are whole heartedly embracing this new cyber interface, those that are ignoring it like farmers who don’t trust doctors, and a more ambiguous group who are timidly setting up an account, but whose confidences have been wounded by the notion that Myspace just wasn’t enough. Just like ‘Tom’s little TAFE …
