Justin Heazlewood

Dweezil Zappa

Frank Zappa was a true musical polymath who tackled almost every conceivable genre from doo-wop to disco to symphonic orchestration to incendiary hard rock to jazz fusion before succumbing to cancer in 1993.

Since 2006, DWEEZIL ZAPPA has been taking his father’s extensive catalogue on the road. More than a sedentary ancestral tribute act, ZAPPA PLAYS ZAPPA is part legacy restoration and part education, as Dweezil explains. “There really wasn’t anything promoting Frank’s music to a new generation. I don’t view Frank’s music as being a nostalgia experience. I view it as being very modern, and in many cases ahead of its time.”

Contrary to popular opinion, Frank was also totally alcohol and drug free. “A lot of people have this perception that Frank was always super high. He just wasn’t. When I was about eight years old seeing people acting strange at his shows it was a little bit scary and I’d ask him ‘What’s wrong with those people?’ and he’d say ‘Well, those people are on drugs or have been drinking a lot of alcohol and they think it gives them an excuse to be an asshole.’ So for me, knowing Frank didn’t approve of that, it made perfect sense for me not to do it.”

Frank was also a fierce satirist, with an admittedly challenging sense of humour that was often mistaken for wayward juvenilia. It’s another imbalance Dweezil is seeking to redress. “A lot of people thought of him as a novelty act like Weird Al Yankovic. They weren’t familiar with some of his more sophisticated compositions or his classical work.” Indeed, in the final years of his life Frank had given up rock altogether to focus strictly on orchestral composition. Not that the public’s confusion mattered to him much. “Ultimately he didn’t care. He wrote music because that’s what he liked to hear.”

For the moment, Zappa Plays Zappa deals with Frank’s more popular rock focused material. The project meant that Dweezil cautiously considered the issue of ex-band mates. “There are plenty of people that have been in Frank’s band that have been fired for bad behaviour – drugs or insubordination for example. In general I didn’t want to have any of that kind of drama.”

As a result, Dweezil was adamant the focus would be on the music and not the personalities. “Some alumni just try to draw attention to themselves by changing the music. It’s not serving the music – they’re just trying to cash in on Frank. In the end, the music suffers. Generally, the people that take sides on this sort of thing, you’d be hard pressed to call them fans anyway.”

Whilst dealing exclusively with Frank’s catalogue (a cover of Peaches En Regalia won a Grammy in 2009 for the project) Dweezil is contemplating the next step – original compositions. “Well that’s what the fans are asking for as well. We’ll see. Maybe when I get some time.”

The 2CD set Return Of The Son Of… is out now through Shock.

LapTopping

BEER THEN WINE YOU’RE FEELNG FINE?

Beer then schnapps you'll feel like crap.

Beer then Sambuca you can't get damn crooker.

Beer then vodka call the squad car.

Beer then creme de cocoa you'll be supremely k.o'd.

Beer then vermouth - forsooth!

Beer then tequila - all killer no filler.

Beer then sherry street cred be wary.

Beer then bacardi equals end of the party.

Beer then midori who's the girl, what's the story?

Beer then bourbon you'll think you're Tyler Durden.

Beer then punch well there goes lunch.

Beer then cheese you won't want tea.

Beer then molasses you're having personal problems.

Beer then water you really oughta.

LapTopping

THE ADVENTURES OF SPACE CAT!

Chapter One

Space Cat is launched into space, warp factor eight. The journey takes three years. Space cat sleeps most of the way.

Chapter Two

Space Cat lands on a foreign planet. The ship’s landing paws come down and gently knead the ground. The docking doors open. Space Cat can't decide whether to stay in or go out.

Chapter Three

During the surveillance mission Space Cat is alarmed to discover an alien species that resembles vacuum cleaners.

Chapter Four

Space Cat is brought to meet with the planet's leader, but his Cat customs bring confusion. He appears interested for a moment then wanders away for no reason.

Chapter Five

Space Cat returns to his ship to find biscuits and litter tray are at critical levels. Activates an emergency 'grey alert’.

Chapter Six

Space Cat is reminded of his Space Fleet oath not to interfere with other civilisations. The ship passes Canaryian 4, Goldfishilus and Lizardopia.

Chapter Seven

Space Cat is about to be killed by the great Doberman warlord. Phew, it's just a holodeck simulation.

Chapter Eight

Space Cat returns home to Catnip 5. He is honoured for his bravery at a ceremony. He is given a trophy made out of the back of a couch and presented with the keys to his new home, built out of old jumpers.

LapTopping

URBAN HEADLINES

SECRET SONG ON END OF CD COULD PROBABLY HAVE BEEN LEFT OFF
MAN FEELS WEIRD AFTER TIPPING AGAINST OWN FOOTBALL TEAM

UNI STUDENT PRETENDS TO UNDERSTAND BOB DYLAN LYRIC

FILM BUFF DISTRACTED BY MARGARET POMERANZ' SNORT LAUGH

HAIRDRESSER FLIPPANT ABOUT CLIENTS DAY

SPORTS DRINK COULD JUST BE CORDIAL

FASHION MAGAZINE NICE PLACE TO VISIT WOULDN'T WANT TO LIVE THERE

BOY UNABLE TO DATE AFTER REALISING ALL CANDIDATES ARE HIS FRIENDS

GIRL SECRETLY BORED AFTER BAND START TO GET A BIT SAMEY

ARTIST FEELS PATRONISED IN BANK

TWO AND A HALF MEN ON AGAIN

TEENAGER INTIMIDATING

CIGAR BAD IDEA

FRIENDS STORY ABOUT WORK COULD HAVE DONE WITH EDIT

BOY FORCED TO NURSE BACKPACK AFTER JIGGLY BUS TRIP

FACEBOOK BASICALLY A SOCIAL POKER MACHINE

GIRL PRAYS FOR PERIOD BEFORE OR AFTER MUSIC FESTIVAL

TEXT MESSAGE GRAMMAR SUFFERS

WOMAN CAN'T REMEMBER WHAT SHE DID TWO BIRTHDAYS AGO

OLD HIGH SCHOOL FRIEND PUTS ON WEIGHT

MULTI VITAMIN DOES LITTLE OTHER THAN MAKE WEE BRIGHT YELLOW

LapTopping

TEXT MESSAGE BLUNDERS

Let's go to the movies

Let's go to tie mother

Hey Alice hope you're ace

Hey Algae hope you're bad

take care roads are icy

take cape sober is gay

I'm in a rush

I'm in a suzi

your song was lovely

your pong was loudly

see you for brunch

pee you for crunch

catch you soon

batch you smoo

do you know what time you are on

do you know what vine you ape on

Thanks Darling

Thanks Earking

I think about our kiss

I think about our lisp

I love you

I loud wot

I crave your body

I brave your andy

I'm full of lust

I'm full of kurt

let's watch a dvd

let's watch a dud

That sounds fascinating xxx

That sounds fascinating zzz

LapTopping

WORLD CLASS JOKES

Q. How many cool kids does it take to change a lightbulb?

A. One, but they liked the old one better.

Q. What do you get if you cross a high school reunion with a computer virus?

A. Facebook.

Q. What’s the most dangerous part of a budgie?

A. The seedy underbelly.

Q. How do horny office workers communicate?

A. Booty fax.

Q. Why did the secretaries get in trouble for doing their nails?

A. They were file sharing.

Q. Why did the Internet cross the road?

A. Something to do with porn!

Q. What’s Ben Lee’s favourite CD?

A. Claire Danes.

(credit: Josh Earl)

Q. How many iPhones does it take to iPhone?

A. iPhone.

Q. What do vegans read their children?

A. Clarence and the carob kingdom.

Q. What’s Peter Garrett’s least favourite Midnight Oil song?

A. Beds Are Burning (due to faulty insulation policy).

Q. What do you get if you cross a graphic designer and a performer?

A. Half of Melbourne.

LapTopping

GAMES FOR ONLY CHILDREN
(There are no winners).

Kitchen Hovercraft

Cover kitchen floor in butter. Sit on vinyl beanbag and kick off. (Hovercraft is uno-directional. It can only go straight – into Mum's vase collection.)

Bird Fishing

Affix seed bell to fishing line. Cast into tree. When you get a nibble draw line in. At end of day get a photo of you holding up a cage with all your birds in it. Release birds. Repeat step one.

Pillow Fight Club

The first rule of pillow fight club is don't think about pillow fight club. Just go into a bedroom and pummel yourself about with pillows. (Recommend filming it and uploading to YouTube).

Internet charades

Start your own chat room with a focus on the game Charades. Invite people to play. You have to type out the actions you are doing. Ie *holds up three fingers* *rolls around on ground* *makes arms as if holding a baby*.

Car Piñata

Make a piñata pony. Dangle it from nearest bridge that crosses over a busy road. Lower it until it is in reach of cars. When a car hits it run down, congratulate them and share the lollies.

Cat Gladiators

Place 2-6 cats on trampoline. Bounce around until only one cat remains. Cat is dubbed Meowsimus.

Struth be told

AUSTRALIAN FILM NEWS

Inspired by the success of Where The Wild Things Are and Fantastic Mr Fox, Australian director Baz Luhrmann has begun production on a 240 million dollar version of Australian children’s book Grug. Angus Sampson is touted to play the burrawang tree turned haystack with a face with Rose Byrne cast as Cara the snake. Luhrmann says the challenge will be sculpting the relatively simple plotlines into today’s standard three and a half hours for a feature film. He has suggested the series may be condensed so that Grug has a birthday, plays soccer and finds a rainbow all in the one day.

Not to be outdone, Warwick Thornton, director of Sampson and Delilah, is planning a gritty portrayal of children’s classic Clifford The Big Red Dog. The adaptation will be a tribute to the wide range of megafauna that roamed the Australian outback 50,000 years ago. Clifford will be a mythical dingo that appears to the Anangu people of Alice Springs.

Meanwhile Nick Cave has also jumped on the children’s book bandwagon, penning a script for a feature film adaptation of Eric Hill’s Where’s Spot? Cave’s script sees one man’s 50 year quest around the world to find his beloved cocker spaniel, stolen by a drug cartel on his tenth birthday. The big budget epic is rumoured to be utilising state of the art 4-D technology, where audiences will be able to lift up the movie screen to see whether Spot is behind it. Critics have dubbed the technology a sham, saying an usher dawdling through the theatre in a dog costume is hardly revolutionary.

Struth be told

Struth be told

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 it’s 2008.

Most of us are in three technological camps. Those that are wholeheartedly 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 assignment’ took over from primitive newsgroups and blog sites, Facebook is a natural evolution, and we must accept the fact that one day it too may be surpassed by a superior form of social networking. In fact, I heard a rumour that the creators of Myspace and Facebook are working on an advanced messaging system, called something like… what was it? Oh yeah – GOING OUTSIDE!

MySpace was the virtual Roman Empire for Gen-Y. We all worked hard to make it the pop culture cyber banquet of good times, but somewhere along the way it got greedy. Once the novelty value of friend collecting and ‘waz up I’m bored’ messaging fun died down, it was revealed for the clunky, spam ridden, corporate sprite-vomit of fabricated teen try hard lameness it actually is. It’s perfectly fine for artist promotion, but as a simple networking tool it suffers more unexpected errors than the Howard Government. (Ouch!) Facebook, by comparison, is a smooth Corvette of clean lines, white space, group messaging facilities and a blatant user-friendliness never before seen on the Interweb. Its event invite function is an effective promotional tool, bands can start up their own groups, hell – you can even play Pacman. It appears to be the perfect prototype for a uniform, universal unilateral union of human connectivity.

Why then, does it give me the e-shits?

Three words. Sideshow freaking alley! I don’t need to return a zombie bite from a girl I sat next to in grade three. I don’t need to compare my movie quiz answers with some dude I’d have nothing to say to if I met in a pub. I don’t want a food fight, a nickname, a virtual hug, a pet fungus, a ‘places I’ve been’ map, an afro kit, a Mr T poetry generator, a Super Poke? – I’m 27 years old! Where’s the ‘email me if something’s important’ or ‘text me and we’ll meet up like adults’ applications?

Nextly, Facebook knows TOO much. Obscure girl from high school asks to be my friend, I accept, and suddenly her ‘newsfeed’ shows her my daily status updates, friends I’ve added, plus a direct copy of comments I write to my close pals. And hallelujah! – now I’m privy to such ‘breaking news’ as the fact that dude I barely know has been tagged in a photo by some git. What am I? Brain damaged and confined to a wheel chair? Link this: www.idon’thavetimeforthismofos!.com!

Solution? I’ve become a closed book. I’ve set everything to private, got my friends down to 55, setting the bar as people I would be able to speak to comfortably at a party. I’m keeping MySpace as my ‘popularity contest’ and playing Facebook on my own terms. Being counterculture is so in! Now where’s the pen, paper and phonebook? It’s time to start another chain letter.

Struth be told

Struth be told

Struth be told

Struth be told

Struth be told

They say dance is the hidden language of the soul - if this is the case then Friday nights are all about learning to say rude words. Is there no greater relief from the cerebral shackles of modern life than cutting some serious lunch on the floor? While girls are so rhythmically infused they could dance to the beat of their own heart, for men, like most things, it's tricky. Strangled by their Straighty 180 collars and Blend It Like Beckham jeans, men love nothing more than to hover on the sides like out of work bodyguards, tapping along sheepishly, demonstrating that a fear of commitment isn't limited to relationships. It wouldn't hurt anyone to take dancing more seriously. Menfolk, listen up, put down the work boots and pick up the dancing shoes, the time for action is now - there's murder on the dance floor and it's women kicking our arses. I realise this is part of the problem - we don't have arses! The song says shake your money maker, not sit on your bad assets.

For most guys, dance isn't their first language. Leave them standing long enough in a nightclub and eventually their screen saver will activate. This is called the Terry Two Step. First shuffle left / then shuffle right / your arms shouldn't leave your sides all night. Repeat until magically laid. What happened to all the ones we learnt in high school? The heel/toe polka, the pride of erin, the Mexican hat dance? It's devolved into the Australian jacket dance, where blokes try and lure women by shifting around a stack of wallets. Break dancing will consist of tripping over as they walk to the bar while a frenzied pat down to find their keys will be offered up as the macarena. The song says shake it like a polaroid picture, not fiddle with it like a digital camera! If the dance floor is musical speed dating then you've got to put your best club foot forward.

Dancing is all smoke and mirror balls. Like a lot of things in life, when in doubt, just act like you know what you're doing. On the dance floor I become captain busy, throwing shapes and jamming genres together like Crunkenstein, the line between irony and earnestness up and down like a stereo equaliser. Spinning and kicking, sliding and dipping - I'm a mime routine of a horny octopus making soup on a bouncy castle. I enjoy the thrill of not really knowing what I'm doing, but thinking that I may appear like I do; the cosmic sex bluff of throwing some Napoleon Dynamite VS Spike Jonze in the Praise You film clip super-spaz shapes with such rigour that they could be taken seriously, or better yet, sexily. Usually, this isn't the case. I've been told that I make people around me dance out of time, like a rhythmic black hole. One girl said dancing with me was like being double bounced on a trampoline.

The urban discotheque can be intimidating. From the religious zest of the Nutbush to pro-am rockabilly swing dancers and all girl Kate Bush interpretive rock eisteddfods, men can be forgiven for feeling trapped inside a Broadway show where they've missed all the rehearsals. What's that saying? Every Good Boy Deserves Funk. Whatever your demographic I believe the mojo is within you, and there's only one way to get it working again. Fellas, here's a quick dance lesson from me: Move. Your. Fucking. Hips. If dance is the language of the soul, then it's worth seeing what your soul has to say. Sure, it might just be 'shit...shit...shit' but it's still better than silence.

JUSTIN HEAZLEWOOD

Justin performs as The Bedroom Philosopher and writes for Frankie, Jmag and The Big Issue www.bedroomphilosopher.com

Struth be told

So Thom Yorke has come out and declared the album is dead. Well, if not dead it's certainly lying in intensive care with a cracked case and a terminal cache of scratches on the CD. Since the advent of iTunes, the trend has been that no one under 20 buys CDs any more. And why would they? The things get ripped straight onto computers and then what use are they? To load into your discman on the train? I'm afraid this, along with lying on your bed reading lyrics in six-point, is relegated to the '90s along with rollerblading and vienettas. Now we get an album cover gravatar and a tracklist destined to be corrupted by file sharing cowboys and DJ shuffle.

In the past singles have been used as an incentive to sell the album. Now, the concept of buying a CD single is laughable (they're $10, when a single song is $1.70). Instead, kids are happily breaking up albums like chocolate bars to get the no obligation songs they like. At best, they may grace the others with a thirty second audition. This is why songs need good hooks, for the iTunes preview.

Spare a thought for the poor musicians, who spend the best part of a year and tens of thousands of dollars painstakingly recording their six string super hits in 24-bit high definition, only to have it crudely crushed into an mp3 and listened to through flat earphones. Those of you who take music for granted should realise the audio quality of an mp3 compared to a CD is like going from a five course Indian banquet down to a sausage roll. Music isn't just about that awesome guitar riff or those pounding synth drums, it's about the texture of the high treble frequencies blending with the mid-level tones and the soothing sub-bass. Just think of the loud shirted, poor postured, questionably hygiened producer who has sat at the mixing desk labouring for months to ensure the song reaches your ears with just the right blend of equalisation. Every time you listen to your iPod, he cries. (More to do with his marriage but still...)

So, is our lord and saviour Thom Yorke correct in peering down from his post-EMI pedestal and declaring the album dead for us non-visionary plebs? Part of me says 'screw you dude.' I've waited my whole life to be able to make an album. To feel the electric rush of running a knife along the box and opening it up to see the ribbed canvas of a hundred identical spines glowing back at me. To lie in bed listening to my own ideas and sonic creations purring back through the cradle of compression and the gloss of mastering. I think of the hours I've dedicated to the finer details, like the right sequencing of tracks, and how that will ultimately be broken by someone who 'grabbed a heap of shit off a mate's iPod.'

Though the album may be dying, music itself is thriving. It's never been so accessible, and despite the file share explosion, there has been an apparent revival in young people buying vinyl. For now, it means that dads like me pushing thirty can proudly bang on about how great CDs were to a generation who can't quite hear because they're partially deaf, with a face full of sausage roll.

JUSTIN HEAZLEWOOD

Justin performs as The Bedroom Philosopher and writes for Frankie, Jmag and The Big Issue www.bedroomphilosopher.com

Struth be told

INTERVIEW WITH THE INVENTOR OF THE GOLDEN GAYTIME (CONT.)

John informs me that for every Golden Gaytime success story there were another ten ice creams left splattered on the factory floor.

"There's dozens of them we went through. They brought one out called the Aniseed High Top. It was a delightful thing to eat but any white clothes it marked, so that didn't last too long. A delightful ice cream we called the South Pacific as they'd brought out the movie and everyone was going troppo about it so we brought out this half banana half something else and that failed within three weeks. Our greatest delight was to manufacture dandy cups of ice cream and raisins with a hard dosing of rum. They were pretty well over proof ice cream. They used to have them after the RSL Anzac Day marches but unfortunately one year they got mixed up and a lot of them ended up in the Country Women's Association. They didn't order them next year."

While for many of us working in an ice cream factory sounds like a dream job, John speaks of an intense workload. During summer, when production was at its highest, he would sometimes work around the clock, sleeping at the factory. This was on top of the constant pressure to come up with the next 'hit.'

"When you've got to sit down and come up with a new ice cream every three months it's a bit daunting. We used to go out to the schools and talk to the kids. You'd produce a line, take it out to the primary school, line up all the infants and say 'well what do you think of that?' Try and get an opinion out of them. They liked anything free anyway so it was a bit of a lost argument."

After about a decade, John left the dairy game to work in other areas of food production. While he can still enjoy an ice cream, life has delivered an ironic fate.

"I'm not supposed to have them because I'm diabetic. I still go three or four a week. There's a wrapper under the front seat of the car I think. I've got to hide them from the wife. I bought a Golden Gaytime the other day and they're pretty thin so they must be making their profit out of it. They used to be a larger wedge, a heavier weight in ice cream, so maybe it's only half gay."

John isn't able to shed much light on how the name came about. He says it was the result of a 'toss-around' by the advertising company at the time.

"How it related to ice cream I never knew but it sounded all right at the time. I think the name is the thing that keeps it going. Everybody looks at one now and oh, I don't know what their movements are but there's nothing gay about the bloody ice cream I can tell you that. I suppose if you made an ice cream called a virgin ice cream it might sell like hell as well. The lesbian fruit-choc or something like that."

In the late '90s Streets brought out the Chocolate Golden Gaytime and one in a cone. To me both were like eating a pot plant.

"That's the variations by bad management. It's how far you can push a name. To me, a Holden's a Holden and a Gaytime's a Gaytime. You bring a Holden out as a Vauxhall Vectra, it's lost the name again. If you bring out another ice cream that's not quite the same as the original Gaytime people will go off it. There was a Cherry Golden Gaytime but that didn't last. We tried fudge in one at one stage."

At this point I remind myself that I'm listening to a man talk matter of factly about packing fudge into a Golden Gaytime, right after comparing them with cars. I finish the interview by thanking John for creating my favourite ice cream, which raises a wry smile. For him the Golden Gaytime is just another ice cream on another stick, but for generations of Australians it is a socially complicated but ultimately rewarding love affair of yum.

JUSTIN HEAZLEWOOD

Justin performs as The Bedroom Philosopher and writes for Frankie, Jmag and The Big Issue www.bedroomphilosopher.com

Struth be told

A while back I was contacted by the inventor of the Golden Gaytime's 'people' after hearing my song on triple j. While in Adelaide I arranged an interview with him. It was bumped by Frankie because Streets claimed they hadn't heard of the guy. Here is part one of the story:

Most of us have had a Golden Gaytime moment. You're at the milk bar, clutching Australia's most iconic ice cream. The shopkeeper eyeballs you. At the last minute you lose your nerve and end up grabbing milk, bread and a newspaper with the yellow sliver tucked sheepishly underneath. You race out of the shop and down an alley. You rip off the wrapper and bite into the delicious soft combo of toffee and biscuit crumbs, free from retribution. Being a long-term fan of the treat with the timeless design and hilarious name, I once wrote a song about it that got played on the radio. I was contacted by the creator's 'people' saying that he'd like a copy. I obliged, asking in return to interview the mysterious John Milton at his home in Adelaide. In a brilliant twist, the creator of the Golden Gaytime turns out to be the most laidback Aussie bloke I've ever met. With silver hair, stern expression and laconic humour, the man who now runs a car spray-boothing business sits poolside chain smoking and speaking matter-of-factly about ice cream production.

"Back in the late '60s they were really experimenting to see what people wanted. The Golden Gaytime was based on an ice cream that was vanilla with a chocolate coating on it. When the ice cream was removed from the mould and still warm we tried to apply the remnants of peanuts left over from Max Noblet's (Nobby's) peanut factory in Adelaide. It used to stick in your teeth so that wasn't too good. For a fleeting time we started to apply coco pops or rice bubbles. That didn't work either."

When John realised that broken biscuit pieces were being thrown out at the factory down the road, he made a connection.

"We supplied a lot of butter oil for their Yo-Yo biscuits. It was a matter of the driver coming back and saying 'what are they gonna do with all those waste biscuits?' So I said 'let's take a look at it.'"

The biscuit pieces were then blown onto the warm chocolate giving us the ice cream we know today. In this sense the Golden Gaytime was eco-friendly well before its time.

"It was all experimental. We were just fiddling with food. We used to go and play in the laboratories and see what we could mess up next. We had two doctors in there and yeah, it was fun. It kept you thinking."

When I first contacted John, his tone was one of bemusement that the Golden Gaytime could have had such a lasting impact. Throughout the interview he is defiantly modest about his iced legacy.

"The Gaytime just evolved. It wasn't anything special at the time that you'd beat drums about. It was just another ice cream on another stick. You know, the humdrum of what you do daily it wasn't anything we thought was gonna save the world, it was just bringing out another line. Understand what the people want and give it to them. We were happy when we produced a line that was successful. You couldn't sit back there and pamper with your ego, all you did was get on and produce the next line. I don't think it was so much pride as intrigue. It was only supposed to last three months."

To be concluded...

JUSTIN HEAZLEWOOD

Justin performs as The Bedroom Philosopher and writes for Frankie, Jmag and The Big Issue www.bedroomphilosopher.com

Struth be told

Throughout the ages man has felt an insatiable desire to self-publish. The origins of blog and zine culture can be traced back to the Stone Age. It was here that early man first became aware of his own genitals and was able to draw them on a cave wall (a cromagnadoodle). This is the art world's equivalent of inventing the wheel. Man then became in touch with his own ego ('grong woz ere 10000 b.c.'), and published a primitive rant piece ('mamoth sux'). These incidents would also provide the well tagged cornerstone for modern day graffiti, which has itself evolved from 'for a good time call' binge booty texts, to pseudo-academic philosophies and grammar defying blather.

My first memory of graffiti was in my hometown Burnie where someone had spray-painted 'BAD DUES' on the swimming pool wall. They were obviously such bad dudes they didn't even need all the letters. Other haikus included 'RAP MUSIC,' 'Karissa is a mole' and a super smiley out of proportion woman about to rendezvous with a finger. When I was ten I took time out from a pleasant family BBQ to use a public toilet, only to read some explicit scrawls about pleasuring a clitoris. There was no internet safe search or shrink wrap plastic to protect me from this self-published smut. I traced the walls and found them to be full of inglorious and puzzling sentiments. Who were these profane prophets, putting the amen in amenities?

Stepping into a cussed up cubicle is like being inside a not so 'beautiful mind.' Similar to the scene where Russell Crowe's maths theories sprawl out like vines, in the urine-y toilet it's more of a spidery throwback to The Shining. The manic, the frustrated, the crestfallen and the bemused; their all-work-no-play primal screams tattooed in hexed texta. After a couple of breath-defying sessions in 'they smell how I feel' unisex booths, I've identified the five main genres of faffiti as:

ANGRY: "fuckin shoeless punx homos the lot of em" - Burnt out teacher turned pot dealer who's ran out of papers and missed out on the open mic blackboard.

POLITICAL: "You tosser...it's getting weird everywhere. We're so lucky here. Ever imagined Stalin's USSR or Nazi Germany, or the Chinese cultural revolution? Get your head out of your own ass you tragic person." Political Science student coked out on no doz in the ninth trimester of his PhD riffing with a Kerry O'Brien hallucination.

PHILOSOPHICAL: "Always keep a diamond in your mind." Drifter hippy girl big on spirituality and getting smashed - full of love, unreliability and Tom Waits lyrics.

POETIC: "By the flickering stars with my legs around his hips. The currency of love is being cremated." Scholarly goth hip-gypsy calamity girl with long legs and dark eyes. A walking Nick Cave song who's constantly 'burning off' and 'workshopping.'

FUNNY: "What if the hokey pokey is what it's all about?" Youth worker slash amateur comedian spends a lot of time with teenagers - communicates in Simpsons quotes and sees toilet wall as platform for positive change.

I have an admiration for anyone who takes the time to write a letter to the editor in God's pool room. Being a democracy, other users have the right of reply. The silver pen statement 'LOVE EVERYONE' was met with: (except you.) The incongruous 'I am in the ladies' was backed up with 'fair plan to u brother.' While my favourite was 'playing banjo is the key to happiness all your problems.' On the bottom of the toilet door was this quivering sonnet:

'all I had to do
was hold onto you
when the world spins so fast
and our grips cannot last
the force that holds us here
finally disappears. Xox'

I felt a pang of sadness, took out my pen to reply, but found that I'd been beaten to the punch. 'LIFE SUCKS DICKHEAD.' Sometimes words are enough.

Justin performs as The Bedroom Philosopher and writes for Frankie, Jmag and The Big Issue www.bedroomphilosopher.com

Struth be told

Watching a good movie at the cinema can have a profound effect. For a dramatic person, it's a natural drug for your emotions. The big screen blast is eye ecstasy while the surround sound is audio cigarettes for your swelling heart. The cocktail of adult themes and special effects soothes your troubles and gives your inner coil a buzz on. I leave the cinema riding a wave of grand feelings, replaying the highlights with me in the role of protagonist. We've all cast ourselves in our favourite movie plots. I like to imagine the hilarious fallout where fantasy meets reality.

Let's say The Truman Show is really happening to you. Everyone you've ever met in your life is actually a paid actor. That's a pretty solid performance by your family, huh? The last person to mention a band or TV show was actually fulfilling a paid sponsorship agreement. Your partners, past and present - all pretending! (But they are method actors and actually into you.) I like the idea of slowly cottoning on that my life was a television show and it's the reason I've never left Australia - there's no more set! My friends have simply staged all their travel photos. The country I know is no bigger than a small town located in a massive dome in Hollywood. All the vehicles I've been on are simulators. Just like Truman I'll get to the point where I'm 'onto it' and do a runner out into the ocean. Once outside I'll be told by a bored Centrelink official that my show was cancelled in my early 20s due to poor ratings. Audiences were alienated by my self-consciousness and obscure humour. (I'll then be told that I was so lovely to work with, the actors kept the show going by volunteering their time.) Once out, I'll put myself straight into counselling to help deal with the real world (something I do anyway) and sip a ginger beer in a park while I go through the past like a hungover person goes through their actions at a party. (My 'alone time' in the bath! Good grief.) I'll be told that while The Truman Show was for a mainstream audience, my life had been directed by some edgy New York filmmaker for an arty channel and that's why I was given such a bumpy ride.

What about Fight Club? Imagine if that was happening to you. Goodness knows, you're tired all the time, wouldn't this make sense? You're not really in bed, you're actually sleep-racketeering. It would explain the weird looks you get, not to mention the missing money and that email spam is your minions communicating with you in code. If Fight Club were happening to me and I had my own Tyler Durden alter-ego, I wouldn't be doing anything cool like organising my own army of urban vigilantes - I'd just be booking gigs and trying to flirt with girls. Sure enough, some 'Jason Hazlehoff' character would emerge, who was in a band and actually going to bed with all my attractive friends. I'd wonder why people in the street would say 'great show last night' even though I didn't go out and my female friends would get uppity when I gave them a modest hug hello. Breaking point would come during a gig when I'd wake up as Jason on stage, only to have a massive heckling and wrestling battle with myself (something I do anyway). I'd eventually convince Jason to manage me, so I could get networking and admin stuff done literally in my sleep. Eventually he/we would flip right out and I'd wake up in a Centrelink basement with a bunch of dynamite hooked up to a timer. Yep, the day you feel a small rumble and find your HECS debt mysteriously cleared - that'll be us.

JUSTIN HEAZLEWOOD

Justin performs as The Bedroom Philosopher. New album 'Brown & Orange' out now. He also hosts sketch radio show 'Lime Champions' on Melbourne's 3RRR Mondays 7pm. The show can be streamed or podcasts found at rrr.org.au. www.bedroomphilosopher.com

Struth be told

A friend studying psychology was telling me some controversial sexual selection theories. They presume that reproduction and survival of the species are our base concerns. Men want to increase their chances of survival by 'spreading themselves' far and wide. Women are more selective and concerned with commitment, to ensure the cultivation of healthy children. The book suggests men are attracted to younger girls as they have a longer fertility cycle, while women are drawn to older, more successful men as they will make for better providers. Take THAT Valentine's Day. I'm Dad Man and she's a womb on legs! Screw you love, you're nothing more than a release of serotonin designed to make us stay together and breed. On paper it's threatening stuff and gets your ego bent right out of shape - but it also gets me thinking. We go to a lot of effort dressing life up as a complex, multi-dimensional rollercoaster of hardships and glory, but how far have we outrun our primeval roots? What if every smart-alec thing we did could be subconsciously traced back to mankind, as a mammal, ensuring its survival? What if we were just as Bill Hicks suggested, "a virus with shoes"?

I started to have some fun with it and took each facet of life and traced it back to survival and reproduction. School and work: we become intelligent so we can get a good job to earn money to attract a partner and raise children. Art and creativity: art provides a shared communication about the human experience improving our mental health so we can survive. We create art to appear more interesting so we can attract a partner and raise children. Religion: the concept of God provides an answer to every unanswerable question therefore we are less likely to be fraught with anxiety or depressed over the meaninglessness of it all (so we can survive and raise children). Politics and laws: without a governing body protecting us we would be more likely to fall into anarchy, which would restrict our ability to survive and raise children. Recreation: is a healthy activity which provides a counterpoint to work and promotes physical exercise which ensures humans survive so they can... well... raise children. War: this was a bit hard - to prevent overpopulation of the earth? To maintain a level of fear in society which deters antisocial trends that may encourage anarchy.

And the finale! For a million points: homosexuality. If human biology is all about reproduction and survival of the species, then please explain this curve ball? I turned to the modern day shaman - Dr Guyonablog. He said for starters that it may be nature's way of ensuring that earth doesn't become overpopulated, which sounds a little homophobic to me - 'hey, no sweat mankind - we'll just be off being gay in the corner and make way for you child-bearers.' He then suggested homosexuality may be a form of superior evolution encouraging humans to do away with 'antique' heterosexual reproduction and allow scientific advances to create 'healthy people' in the laboratory. Well, we already have IVF treatment and a woman no longer needs a man to 'hunt and gather' for her, so a homosexual relationship makes as much sense as a heterosexual one. Man, how funny would a society be where gay was mainstream? You'd have bogans driving around going 'hey hetero, you like vaginas!' A model family would be David and Keith from Six Feet Under.

Why am I bringing all this up? I'm intrigued with the spiritual fallout between my sophisticated arty brain and my biological urges. I can be sensitive, intelligent and thoughtful and also just a horny guy perving on a bus. There's parts of myself I'm not that comfortable with, so I'm happy to pick at some brutal psychology and pepper my stocks of self-understanding. As Oscar Wilde said - "life is too important to be taken seriously."

Justin Heazlewood

Reference: Notes on the Elements of Behavioral Science By Doris Zumpe, Richard P. Michael.

Justin performs as The Bedroom Philosopher and writes for Frankie, Jmag and The Big Issue. New album 'Brown & Orange' is out now. www.bedroomphilosopher.com

Struth be Told

Do you ever get the feeling you’re not participating enough in life? Are you trapped in your own head like Being John Malkovich, destined to watch the world play out before you? The older I get the more I realise just how frustratingly self-conscious we can be. The combination of wanting people to like us and trying to avoid conflict has us tiptoeing about like conformist ninjas, gushing niceties on auto-pilot and letting more opportunities slip through to the keeper than Kevin Pieterson.

For me it began in grade six when I had my first dose of self-doubt. My first girlfriend and I were on school camp together. The sun had set and we took an opportunity to sneak off behind the dorms. I stood next to her for five minutes, not speaking. I looked down to the ground and haemorrhaged. My skin turned to glass. A ghost hand erased the scripts in my mind. My heart punched full stops with each passing second. She mumbled something and we wandered back to our friends, only to break up a few weeks later.

At that oily breeding ground for fear, high school, there’d be times when I’d sit in class knowing the answer and then having a mental shoot-out about whether to raise my hand. What if I seemed too square? What if I tried a joke and it backfired? This syndrome continued on into uni and then adult life. When I’m at a show and they ask for a volunteer, I know damn well I’m suited for the role – that I usually succeed at any kind of performance – yet a shy black hole is still in the back of my body, perpetually stewing and swallowing confidence. ‘What will people think?’ Welcome to world’s worst rhetorical questions.

Growing up in a tumultuous home environment, I learnt to take life, and therefore school, very seriously. I worked hard as a student and wanted nothing more than my teachers to like me. On the few times I was faced with the raised voice of reprimand, my heart would collapse like a cake; my chest sizzling with failure and regret. To what lengths have I carried this through with me? In a sharehouse, when someone behaves badly, or when a friend asks for my opinion, how much do I swallow to avoid any risk of being ‘told off’? Playing things safe seems like the logical option, it’s comfortable and no one gets hurt – but ultimately, it’s emotional laziness. Confronting a situation is hitting the gym of life. It burns and it aches, but that’s just passion and impulse cleansing your veins. Afterwards a tear is shed and your heart feels lighter. Your soul has been exercised!

I’m in so many situations where I could network, socialise or flirt. Wayne Gretzky said “you miss 100% of the shots you never take.” We sit back waiting for someone else to make the first move, waiting for someone else to get their hands dirty, to stick their head out, to prop up our fragile egos with an offering – a compliment – a hello! Anything. If you spend too long in your own stream of consciousness, your hands and feet get all wrinkly. The antidote to fear is to ask yourself “what is the worst thing that can happen?” In most cases the answer is “I’ll feel rejected.” But is that so terrible? Will it permanently kill you all dead? Is it not a risk you can absorb, when most of the time it may never happen and you might create a new contact, friendship or romance? You have to ask, is it worse to be rejected by someone else, or rejected by yourself? That's how I feel when I’m sitting on the sidelines.

JUSTIN HEAZLEWOOD

Justin performs as The Bedroom Philosopher and writes for Frankie, Jmag and The Big Issue. New album Brown & Orange is out now. www.bedroomphilosopher.com

Struth be told

The rock and roll circus that was The Bedroom Philosopher tour rolled into Canberra on July 2. (More of a Cirque Du Soleil type circus... costumes and pretension). Our party of seven, split into two cars, went screaming up Northbourne Avenue doing at least 70 km/h, The Beatles at a sensible volume and my arm holding an empty coffee cup daringly out the window. Nothing we could do could compare to the rebellion of ABC 666. Satan with a cup of tea.

Seeing Canberra for the first time in a while reminded me how squares and circles it is. I went on a rant pretending I was Walter Burley Griffin - it involved a bad European accent and "my father was a box maker and I've always loved boxes. I also had a spirograph. I wanted Canberra to have a roundabout on every corner, like cement Connect Four."

Canberra responded to my humour icily. It was seven degrees and raining when we hit Civic. We checked into the YHA. There were seven of us in an eight bed dorm, so we were awkward about a blind date with our extra friend. He turned out to be a meat and potato Irish backpacker airing off his feet, telling us he "moight come dern to the univoisitay laytor."

"Look for the balls!" I screamed to the driver as we winded about the back road labyrinth of the ANU. Sure enough, the big cement balls of the ANU bar appeared. Inside, the atmos was pumping. Fluoro lights. The patter of evening rain. Three tired students and Tooheys New in general. I activated my expectation lowering and nervous energy dispersing subroutines. I reminded everyone that Kurt Cobain had played on this stage, and how people bashed down the doors to see Nirvana. I had visions of a similar event tonight, with people trying to stop me playing I'm So Post Modern.

Post-gig we went back to the YHA to drop off stuff and make our beds. I sat, perplexed, staring into space with a fitted sheet half on. My band asked me what was wrong. "It's so boring," I replied. We strolled next door into the magical parlour of Transit to get loose. Amazingly, there was some kind of electro night on. I remember when Transit used to be Akuna Bar and they did alternative karaoke there. I did Beck's Sexxlaws, still my karaoke highlight to date. The rest of the group got beers while I ordered soda water because I'm that hard.

I sat on a stool with my mate Josh and did our 'everyone's nineteen and we're sitting on stools watching people dance, lucky we know we're cool or we'd be really shit' chat. I was feeling a bit restless so I wandered over to play pool. Some dudes already had a coin down and told me so casually. I came back at them with total aggression. I hadn't drunk or smoked for a few days, self-enforced mood diet, and I was uptight and ready to go these guys. Some cute first year philosophy girls bailed me up in the corner to tell me that I wasn't actually a philosopher. I argued that I knew who Socrates was and had read some Alain De Boton but they just laughed. They said some stuff and asked me if I preferred red or white onion and it was probably flirting but then I got tired and left. Michael Jackson came on and I did a tribute shimmy.

Back at the YHA we went up to the games room where some supremely dull tourists were watching the tennis. We whispered discreetly and they glared at us with pure hatred. On my way to bed I culture jammed the chalkboard so that 'Monday: Aussie movies' said 'Monday: Ass movies.' Still got it.

Justin performs as The Bedroom Philosopher and writes for Frankie, Jmag and The Big Issue. New album Brown & Orange is out now. www.bedroomphilosopher.com.

Struth be told

IN A BID TO OUTDO EACH OTHER, MASTER CHEFS CREATE THE FOLLOWING:

CRABBAGE - Thinly sliced crab meat layered and presented in a leafy ball.

CHOCCOLI - Bushes of chocolate dyed green. A sweet tribute to the workhorse vegetable.

GRAVIOLI - Pouches of pasta laced with a shock of succulent, congealed meat juices.

BEEFROOT - Prime steak sliced thinly and marinated in beetroot.

HAMINGTONS - Cubes of compacted meat sprinkled with chocolate and desiccated coconut.

DEATH BY TURNIPS - A bed of turnips nursing a structured tier of pickled turnips finished with a drizzle of turnip liqueur.

LEGS BENEDICT - Oven roasted chicken legs smothered with serious, buttery sauce.

CAULIFLOWER AU GRATIS - Stalks of cauliflower are steamed, coated in cheese sauce and given away for free.

SAVLOVA - Freshly prepared cuts of saveloy are set inside a fuselage of sweet, meat-based cream.

RISSOLETO - Sun-drenched prime beef rissoles are pounded into oblivion and fried up with some fancy pasta.

BLT - Barracuda, Lentils, Tiramisu.

WORLD CLASS JOKES!

Q. How many community radio announcers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A. Aaah.... now, let's see... I think the answer is... yeah... ah... let me just... that was changed by someone you've never heard of from a record label in Prague.

Q. What's compact, leggy and rarely seen in music?

A. Concertina Turner.

Q. Why did the secretaries get in trouble for doing their nails?

A. They were file sharing.

Q. Why did the Internet cross the road?

A. Something to do with porn!

Q. What do you get if you cross a high school reunion with a computer virus?

A. Facebook.

Q. What's Coldplay's next record going to be?

A. Highest selling f@#%ng single probably.

Q. What's white and stands in the corner.

A. A naughty fridge.

Q. What do vegans read their children?

A. Charlie and the carob factory.

Q. What's the difference between my love life and the global financial crisis?

A. One is a complicated disaster, the repercussions of which will be felt for years, the other is the global financial crisis.

JUSTIN HEAZLEWOOD

Justin performs as The Bedroom Philosopher and writes for Frankie, Jmag and The Big Issue. New album Brown & Orange is out now. www.bedroomphilosopher.com

Struth be told

Having spent a considerable amount of time in small country towns, I have observed the particular characteristics they all share. For starters, they have only one main street with banks, post offices, butchers, chemists and op shops all within waddling distance for ma and pa. Along this strip almost certainly will be a community hall for when The Wiggles blow through. There will be four women's boutiques with maroon and gold blouses in the window and chalkboards out front with ridiculous slogans like 'wise man say woman who shop at Teena's will be one hot momma.' The rest will be made up of sporting goods or spiritual novelty bric-a-brac such as disco globe lamps, ceramic pigs, pictures of fairies gathered around dolphins and 'they put a man on the moon, why can't they put them all there' mugs. The shops all play the same local radio station, 'Hits FM' which despite its promise of a no-repeat work mix always manages to end up on Bon Jovi's 'you give love a bad name.'

Dispersed between standard fast food joints Subway and McDonalds are the local cafes. Out front will be a white plastic dining setting with floral table cloths. The menu will feature a motif of a friendly but clinically overweight baker offering ham, pineapple and cheese toasted fingers, souvlakis and the special of the day: 'Deb's pasties.' The waitstaff will be detached young girls in tight black tops, being bustled about by the passive aggressive power mother licensee with blonde tips. Coffee from these places will come out tasting like lightly bothered milk unless one asks for 'extra strong,' which is country code for 'uptight prick.' Ordering the vegie burger will induce puzzled looks and force the chef to pull out a yellow emergency booklet from under the counter. The vegie burger will be a surprisingly expensive chip sandwich with alfalfa sprouts.

The demographic of the country town consists primarily of old people. There are heartbreakingly cute couples that hobble about and middle-aged women in pink windcheaters clutching handbags looking like they've had life worked out since the late '70s. There will be men in their forties in fluoro yellow work shirts, climbing out of utes adorned with Taz devil stickers. These men look like they only have four emotions and save three of them up for grand final day. The other demographic will be teenage mothers with track pants, ugg boots and angry black pony tails, yelling at their toddlers for being too old for the pram. The most startling realisation in a country town is that there doesn't appear to be anyone between the ages of 18-35. This is because it is either actually the case and everyone has left, or those between those ages all look forty. The combination of not looking after your skin, having children early, and being spiritually malnourished can force you to age at twice the normal rate.

The leading characteristic in a country town is misspelt shop signs. If there is an opportunity to make 'sports' into 'sportz' then it will be taken. Hairdressers will offer 'budget cutz' and the butcher 'cheep meets.' It is unclear if this is due to a lack of 'edukation,' a sense that it will make the shop seem cooler in a rap kind of way, or because the original shop name was already taken. Recent examples include 'Hungry Azz,' 'Fashion Folkus' and 'Browzers' (a bookstore).

Country towns are quaint and unpretentious, bleak and eerie. They are best enjoyed in moderation.

Justin performs as The Bedroom Philosopher and writes for Frankie, Jmag and The Big Issue. The Bedroom Philosopher launches his new album Brown & Orange at ANU w/ his band The Awkwardstra July 2. 8pm. $12. www.bedroomphilosopher.com

Struth be told

Did you know that every thirteen minutes a relationship in Australia ends? Statistics tell us that only 5% of these relationships will end cleanly. The majority will haemorrhage into heaving silence with one staring into space and the other in tears. Sentences will get said: “I don’t know what I feel any more. I just don’t think I can give to this relationship.” The carcass of trust shall hang from necks. There will be gazes from the doorway. Beautiful creatures in knee high socks and soft cotton dresses sprawled on the bed, faces buried in pillows. Nervous men out of scripts and drawing on movie memories. Walk out the door. Just walk out that door. There’s no turning back. We’re past the point of no return.

Having done a snap-survey of my friends I’ve concluded that for those of us that are single, it’s not easy. We’re all nursing a photo album of bruises in our hearts. We’re all staring longingly into the suburban sunset, waiting for the smooth white arms of a perfect match to come cradle us through this spiritual recession. We have so much to give and we feel like we’re going to waste. We sit on public transport retina scanning from afar. Glancing at stockinged legs wondering if now’s the time to stand up, ride the bumps like a fate surfer and wander over with business cards in hand and the pre-rehearsed line of “hey... you seem really... nice... let me know if you want a coffee sometime...” before thrusting our little rectangle mangle of a lifeforce into the clenched hand of the long-haired lovely, nursing shopping and a good book – innocent royalty in this fraction of a possibility.

How can we meet new people? Us loners. Us washed up lovers. How can we tune into the frequencies of those who would hold our arm as we picked out videos. Who would kiss our necks and laugh softly as we realised our opinions on The Life Aquatic were so damn similar. What combination of words and actions could unlock the vault of chance that would lead us to a universe of warmth beneath covers and the body lock of sweetheart sweat – the timeless utterance of “I’m so glad I found you.”

How can we find those we’d be so glad we found?

We go to gigs, we go to parties, we flick about on Facebook. Everyone looks occupied and unattainable. The beautiful people have their friends, their drinks in hand, they don’t need us and our over-thought desperation. We over-thought it already. Our sentences are like highschool clay, all fingerprints and lumpy joins. What could we possibly offer? We are on the outside of the painting looking in. Colours are creamy and expressions are effortless. It’s a dream in there. How could we approach? We are covered in shadows.

Within a typical day the average single person will create over 186 conflicting thoughts about love. They may tell themselves things like ‘this is a good time to be single’ within the same stanza as ‘I’m horny, everything’s fucked.’ This is normal and is reflective of the human experience. We are wise-cracking muddles all wrapped up tight in string, like Kris Kringles waiting to be given to the right person. We’re store-bought bundles of poetic observations, clever humour and kisses. Woh dear God we are good kissers. Did we mention this? Upon the well-timed mouth we’ll make you forget every insult you’ve ever been given. We’ll take you up in a hot air balloon and land you in a forest of flowers, make you biscuits of the ripest honey and read you the funniest and saddest story, in voices soft as rain.

You just have to find us.

We just have to find you.

JUSTIN HEAZLEWOOD

www.bedroomphilosopher.com

Justin performs as The Bedroom Philosopher and writes for Frankie, Jmag and The Big Issue. The Bedroom Philosopher launches his new album Brown & Orange at ANU on Thursday July 2.

Struth be told

Until April 19 2009, I'd never broken a bone, and I was proud of my track record. This long lasting love affair with self preservation came crashing down along with me and my push bike. I was three quarters through my season in the Melbourne Comedy Festival. It was the Sunday of a Tuesday-Sunday run and I was feeling somewhat 'emotionally volatile.' I'd visited a friend to sell her my spare pedal tuner for some cash flow, bolted over to Safeway and done my patented 'shopping without a list, wandering the aisles scanning every item with frenzied eyes' routine. I had a backpack bulging with goods and I was in a rush to get home to cook some chops and have a nap before the show. I was cycling dangerously, and I knew it. It was night, I had no lights on my bike and dark clothes on. I gunned up to the intersection, which was red, and thought 'hey, look at me, I'm a bike, I can do what I want.' I burned around the intersection and pedalled as fast as I could down a busy main street. I was hitting my top speed when in front of me a parked car flung open its driver's side door. I had one second to sit with the fact that I was about to ride straight into it.

HIT!

I flew through the air like a bony ghost. It was dark, the blood was hurtling to my head. Instincts activated. My body braced itself. The bike came with me. I couldn't tell you the exact maths of what happened. I landed with a strangely satisfying thud, directly on my right shoulder. It must have looked amazing - and terrible. At first I was winded, slightly in shock. I lay on my side, still alive, an instant survivor. A young couple loomed over me.

'Mate, are you alright?'

'Do you need an ambulance?'

'Move your fingers.'

'I didn't see you.'

My first response was to laugh. I was tipsy with adrenalin. 'Ha, oh man, oh fuck, I totally stacked my bike.' I'd been a tightly compacted spring for so long and this crash had unravelled me. Sure, I was stunned and scratched and smacked around, but the pain wasn't piercing and there was something darkly amusing about it straight away. I'd crashed my bike like a 12-year-old and was sprawled out like a drunk dog. It felt like life was sharing a divine joke. A hyperactive uncle pulling the rug from under me, leaning over with whiskey breath and grinning, 'Hey kiddo, seriously, there's only so much you can do.'

I told the couple I didn't want an ambulance because I couldn't afford it. Clearly my brain hadn't been injured in the accident. My first instinct was to check my guitar strumming arm that had taken the fall. I almost cried. My favourite cardigan was torn at the elbow! The couple whose car I'd hit offered to take me to a hospital, but I thought I should just go home. It turns out they were off duty policemen! It explained why they were so efficient at checking on me. Once I was home I sat on my bed holding ice to my shoulder as it began to clamp up. I had a little weep. This was appalling timing. After a wait in emergency my arm was x-rayed and I was informed I'd fractured my humerus. I would have to cancel the rest of my Comedy Festival Shows. Alone in the doctor's office, my heart sank completely. 'You fucked up,' I thought. I looked up at the bright lights, my arm in a sling, my legs dangling over the bed and chuckled in disbelief. 'Finally, you get a break.'

www.bedroomphilosopher.com  

Struth Be Told

Cricketers are the masters of retiring. No sooner does their form start slipping and the knives appear than they’re up on the press conference podium confidently announcing ‘they know it’s time.’ It’s a good attitude. Get out while you’re on top, or at the very least once your ship is full of holes. Entertainers would do well to follow suit. Here’s a few candidates for those who should seriously take the redundancy package and scram.

THE SIMPSONS
The Simpsons are more than an institution, they’re a member of the family. For the last 20 years they’ve joined us for dinner in Homerlicious instalments, and are responsible for some of the greatest one-liners of all time. (Homer: “I know you can read my thoughts boy: meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow.”) But for the last five years a doomed realisation has set in: we’ve seen the old episodes a hundred times, while most of the new episodes look like they were written by Ralph Wiggum. At first, no-one wanted to say anything out of respect, but with the rise of Family Guy and the Adult Swim roster, it just seems cruel to let The Simpsons go on not aging.

SUGGESTED OUTCOME: Give the episodes a break on Channel Ten so we can stop completely taking them for granted. Re-release the DVDs series by series so they can get the ‘watch back to back’ treatment and reignite our passion for this ground-breakingly clever and relentlessly funny show.

MADONNA
Having first experienced it as a nine year old eating Nutri Grain in front of Rage, I still find Like A Prayer to be the most emotionally rousing and complexly sexual of all pop songs. Similarly, Cherish and Express Yourself are such wonderfully realised recordings that despite the latter channeling the erotic power of females, I still associate it with sun drenched mornings dashing off to Surf Club. Madonna’s career graph looks like her cone bra, full of peaks and troughs. Since then the decline has been rapid, with a JT film clip romp and Britney pash only adding to a new air of desperation. (She’s now dating a 22 year old guy called Jesus?! What’s that rule about half your age plus seven?)

SUGGESTED OUTCOME: If only the entertainment industry was like cricket and Mads could move into commentating. I think she’d do well talking us through the latest Beyonce clip, getting the pen out and analysing her moves. What about a Robbie Williams style foray into classic show tunes?

BERT NEWTON
While I was at Uni Good Morning Australia was the perfect backdrop to breakfast and procrastination. Bert’s trademark innuendos and self-aware cheesiness won over oldies and provided ironic-chic for youngsters. GMA was axed in ‘05, and Channel Nine promised to give the people the Bert they wanted in ‘07, but bafflingly, in a climate where Australia would thrive with a regular tonight show, Bert was trapped at the helm of Family Spewed. Now we’re seeing the dark side of the moonface with the vacuous mess of 20-1. It’s not fair letting Bert go out to pasture when we know what he’s capable of.

SUGGESTED OUTCOME: To come full circle, I’d like to nominate Bert as Richie Benaud’s replacement as the face of cricket - ‘Caught behind’ would never sound the same again. Failing that, a tonight show Everybody Berts.

Struth be told

As a kid I’d say “when I grow up I want to be a struggling artist.” When I blew out my birthday candles I’d wish for a first round grant offer from the Australia Council. To further the fantasy, instead of playing shops at school I’d insist we played Centrelink. On dress up days, I’d pull on a bummed-out cardigan and tobacco flecked cords. I had a clear vision of myself as a grown up: in my late-20s, artistically hit and miss, still renting with a phobia of children and a string of failed relationships behind me. And now, I have reached that point. I am an actual grown up. This is it.
This is it?

My lifestyle is so far outside the blueprint of normality that I’ve had to create the sub-genres ‘concept adult’ and ‘grown-down.’ Sure, I’ve got all the things other adults have, like a Medicare card, dry-cleanable slacks and an ability to cook stir-fries, but somewhere in the crucial fields I’ve managed to fall completely between the cracks. Monday mornings are the hardest. While fleets of suited men march handsomely off to white collar windfalls, I grizzle about in bed belting the snooze button like the buzzer in a gameshow where every question is ‘what are you doing today you dreg?’

I was the first Heazlewood to go to Uni and my family held high expectations, but with a bachelor of arts in creative writing I couldn’t even walk into a hand job! *becomes Woody Allen* Unperturbed, I continued my trivial little dallies; getting gigs, receiving benefits, sabotaging casual work, getting smashed on school nights and revelling in the hilarity of it all. At first, the real world has some novelty value. It’s like diving into a freezing river - all you can do is squeal and wriggle about. Come Christmas I’d fly home to Tasmania, skirting around questions like a chain-smoking Dylan.

When the real world novelty wears off, you’re just floating alone in a bottomless dam. You reach a cross-road where your punk aesthetic meets a serious fucking lack of money. You’re trying to pay off the emotional mortgage of a long-term relationship, and provide your own artistic capital while lying on a mattress on the floor at 2am listening to flatmates play ‘Facebook Twister.’ You’re still a big-old kid in your jimmy-jams asking the gods when you’re going to really grow up and have that ‘stability.’ Car, partner, house, kitten, Jason Priestly from 90210 high-fiving you at Christmas. Anything.

I recently held an annual general meeting in my mind and made a moving speech to myself. I vowed that all these years of self-employed work experience were paying off, and that it was more important than ever to think of my bedroom as an office, and to adopt more stringent nine to five hours to my creativity. We decided that the company motto of ‘sorry’ had to go, and that we needed to hold our heads high and ignite a bonfire of pride in our hearts for the ideas farm we’d built from the ground up.

he next morning I slept in, fired myself and came home drunk to find my locks changed and an ad up for my position. I reapplied, was promoted CEO and sold the company to pay back the Bank of Mum.
Cue John Lennon: ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.’ Instant Karma my friends. Don’t allow your life to become a religion where all will be redeemed in the ambiguous ‘future.’ Grow up! I’ve rolled my training wheels and popped my floaties. I’m living, breathing and choking it. Sure, it’s nothing like my family’s visions, but I’m a child of the future! I may not have superannuation but I’m time rich and doing what I love. If you come to my little home I will offer you tea and biscuits, because that’s what grown ups do.

Struth be told

Who could forget the feeling of first discovering your favourite band or show. Like a seasoned explorer, you sail the air waves, telescope poised, waiting for a particular hook, lyric or joke to glimmer on the horizon like a cheeky lighthouse. Eyes grinning through sea spray you throttle your badge encrusted wheel, drop the striped sail on the Good Ship Indie and lay a course for life-changing island. Reaching shore you dash out, plunge your headphone jack into the coconut tree and immerse your mind in its luxurious bounty. That which lay undiscovered now feels like home, and your map of the world becomes a little more complete.

In 1999 my friends and I discovered George. They were fronted by the mesmerising voice of Katie Noonan, best showcased by first single Holiday. We’d go to their gigs at The Gypsy Bar and sit cross legged in the middle of the modest crowd, happy to be sharing our island with fellow explorers. But people like to boast, and our secret location fell into the wrong hands. A few months later I awoke to find George’s album had gone to number one, accompanied by a truly sinister television commercial. Their next gig I stood up the back of the Royal Theatre while a Kon Tiki load of riff-raff scuffed up the sand, burped over the choruses and shouted out for singles. The next day I promptly took my seven inches and magazine clippings and burnt them, chanting a simple cleansing prayer into the flames. George were dead to me now.

It’s a testament to the human ego, the way we make our role as fan completely about us. It’s as if the art is the spiritual putty we need to patch up our sense of self. It’s such a one-sided, long distance relationship, that the true motives often become confused. We’ve all had that hip friend asking if we’ve heard of The Obscures, their eyes burning with rage and glee when we decline. They are at once delighted that their secret remains safe, and exasperated that such genius remains undiscovered. How to solve the paradox of wanting a band to be big, but not too big.

Dan Le Sac’s song Thou Shalt Not Kill goes there. ‘Thou shalt not put musicians and recording artists on ridiculous pedestals. No matter how great they are, or were. The Beatles were just a band. Oasis, just a band. Radiohead, just a band.’ It’s true. Do you think your favourite indie artists are at home running commercial decisions past cynical Myspace fans? ‘Hey guys, even though we’ve struggled for ten years and are on the brink of a major record deal, after extensive messaging with SadGirl79 I think the best way to keep it real is to release an EP in eight years then all somehow die.’ With the decay of the music industry and the DIY internet age removing the fourth wall, surely there’s a little more empathy and understanding towards artists. Whereas the use of Feist’s song 1234 in a Mac commercial would have attracted cries of ‘sell out’ in the ‘90s, it was quietly chalked up as a valid industry manoeuvre.

I recently discovered Six Feet Under, only to find that for most of my friends that good ship had sailed about three years ago. Rather than be deterred I simply persevered and had a sense of rediscovering something beautiful, and have now joined the ranks of ambassadors for the show. Similarly, I’ve gone back and found incredible peninsulas within The Kinks, JJ Cale and Boards Of Canada back catalogues. Sure, The Boosh, Kings Of Leon and MGMT are all over-inhabited, and there are those who’ll sit up the back of their Tavern screaming ‘I discovered them first’ to anyone who’ll listen. But the truth is, you’re the captain of your ship and if you feel like it’s yours then no-one can take that away from you. Alternatively - No band is an island.

Struth be told

In grade ten my girlfriend Kristen cheated on me with an older guy. When I say older I mean he had his Ps. I’d tried everything I could with her, a four hour phone conversation when we lived half an hour away, some serious leg playing with, I even let her boss me around and change her mind every five minutes about whether my school shoes were yae or nae. She ate my chips, she finished my jokes, she left cryptic messages on my pencil case. Now I think about it, she was pretty annoying. As an apology for cheating on me she blu-takked the lyrics to Roxette’s It Must Have Been Love on my locker. I was devastated. It wasn’t my locker. She’d been seeing eight other guys while we were together. The ‘youth group’ she’d taken me to was just a big second date.

In Grade Six I was part of a girlfriend lottery scheme for four-eyed boys. I was placed next to Tenille Alford. She was from New Zealand with exotically dark skin, blue eyes and a shy but funny demeanour. Look at our photo! Seriously, how did I get her? She was so cool her windcheater is still in fashion. We wrote letters to each other, sat next to each other at play-lunch, I think once we even spoke. Crunch time came during the school camp. It was night and we were wandering around the bush, high on Chomps. With a childlike curiosity we gravitated around the back of one of the cabins, alone for the first time. We stood there staring at the moon flecked wood pine for ten minutes. Neither of us spoke. I didn’t breathe. My brain had bungee jumped into my heart, which was sky diving into my stomach, which had unravelled down my legs. I knew why we were there, but I also knew that it was impossible. I was like a possum in the headlights with a bottle opener. She was so lovely and warm and if I had just let my face drift forward and guided it gently against hers – the nicest snap-crackle-tickle could have been mine. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I didn’t. With twigs breaking beneath us I led us back to our friends.

A few weeks later she said she didn’t want to keep being my girlfriend. I’d always attributed it to the fact that the day before my Mum had come to pick us up in her little Yellow VW Beetle. The thing roared like Crazy Frog and looked like a Matchbox Popball. Tenille didn’t look so rapt about being in the back seat. The more I think about it, the more I come back to that night behind the cabins. Through the choice I insisted on making, I had revealed a crucial weakness of character. I had tucked my windcheater into my shorts.

My first real kiss wouldn’t come until four years later when I started wearing contact lenses and girls realised I was all right in the face. I used to attend a regular Christian camp, which had such dangerous rope swings and grass sledding that it was in your best interests to have JC onside. Saturday nights were always pretty flirty. Once, a love-struck couple got their braces stuck together and they had to call in the S.E.S. I’d paired up with Chantel, both of us shy and second tier cool. We wandered up the gravel road and under a clear night sky I told my body that history wouldn’t repeat. It’s a shame it didn’t because we also bumped teeth. Several times. Even God had to look away. It lasted a couple of minutes by which stage we slunk back, too embarrassed to ever talk to each other again.

Twelve years on and not much has changed. Only now I bump hearts.

Struth be told

An emu falling into a swimming pool, a sumo wrestler doing a stand-up, a Christian ska band, a cat singing Nirvana – no, it’s not my dreams last night, it’s just another day on YouTube. We’ve been high-fiving downloads for the best part of two years now – and isn’t it a testament to society just how quickly we’ll let such devices completely infiltrate our lives. Just this morning I wandered into my share house kitchen to find a note from one housemate to another saying ‘YouTube ‘cutest Scottish fold ever’ – I just melted.’ I guess it’s the new ‘do you want to watch a video?’

YouTube clips are like the mix CDs for the video world –  a link of an octopus opening a bottle top can say so much more than words. I had a classic moment of YouTube misfiring recently. Personally, I thought the Peter Russell Clarke blooper reel was the single funniest thing I’d ever seen, but taking it out of context and screening it for my girlfriend’s mother and flatmates, I realised the sentence “fuckin’ fry the cunts till they go black ya prick” could be a bit much.

YouTube at its best means I can watch film clips to my favourite obscure bands and best of all, relive Australian TV ads from the ’80s. Seriously, you can have your trashy ’80s retro fashion all you want, but it can’t compare to the nostalgic sunburst of a sweaty moustached man windsailing in a desert for no apparent reason and then sculling a can of Solo. “Crunchie – change the colour of your day!” Little Ovalteenies running around. Even the Chomp chocolate bar had a low budget, fairly creepy puppet based ad of lumpily rendered strawberries screeching on. The best ad of all time though is for Snack Packs. Take a bunch of bored, hungry school kids, put them on BMXs in matching fluoro tracksuits and have them end up in a Stanley Kubrick mod space chamber where little pods open up to reveal tubs of flavoured custard. Indeed,“if it wasn’t for Snack Packs, a kid’d starve!”

YouTube at its worst is a cesspool of poorly devised footage and hauntingly cult television that attracts a virtual knife-fight of abhorrently homophobic and integrity-free vom-comments. Seriously, I’ve never seen so many manners get left at home – people should wash out their fingers with soap! It seems that anything subtly comedic or vaguely ambiguous gets attacked the most. And they are my genres! I’m So Post Modern got served.

Check out this intellectual nugget from ‘Reaperman2004’:
“JESUS CHRIST THIS GUYS SHIT…People think this is funny??? this was beyond lame… this was just a joke… and I mean that in the derogatory sense of the word. I hope this guy becomes bankrupt from writing this crap… Bedroom philosopher…he should ponder the meaning of his own damn life and figure out what’s wrong with it. No actually - I was right… If this is what is considered funny then the australian sense of humour is fucking doomed….No wonder australians are looked on as sad pathetic beings… their comedy routines and sitcoms suck.”

Who knew John McCain had an account?
Thankfully Davidsbass3 comes to our rescue:
“ever thought that maybe it’s because your sense of humour sucks? And maybe WE don’t take things so seriously. Take a leaf out of our books. and we’re not ALL like this, you dim-witted stereotypical moron.”
Seriously guys, get a chat room!

YouTube can be a wonderful thing. But make sure you download the ‘grain of salt’ application. Remember what your mother used to say about watching too much TV? Don’t think this is some loophole – you’re gonna get rectangle eyes!

The Bedroom Philosopher will be performing at the comedy tent at Trackside on Saturday November 22. Get involved!

Struth be told

SUGGESTED OPENING LINES FOR NOVELS

Frank couldn’t decide which was worse, the angry black flames that spewed from the hull of the cruise ship, or the Jesus shaped Midori stain on his blouse.

Maurice knocked down a lowly two pins at the bowling alley; turning around, he was ironically knocked down by the two pins of his future wife – Doris Baglet, striding forth in a gold-sequinned mu-mu.

Melody Baker negotiated her robot suit much like a child negotiates a massive pile of jackets they’ve had thrown on them; not all together gracefully, but with a tenacity that can only come from being plunged into a self-imposed darkness – regardless, she was a child of the late 2090s and she was as determined as ever to beat her rival Beatrice Wizzlewang at super tennis.

Rodriguez was the bravest pirate cat there was, but watching sea water slosh into the last bag of dry biscuits could drive even the hardest of bandit mascots to madness.

I lost my virginity on a quiz show.

This is a story not about love or death, of trials or questions unanswered, it is simply the story of how one man invented a skateboarding trick that captured the imagination of the queen of Spain.

“I’m inside!” screamed Gavin, whose thirty years of controversial scientific research had finally paid off, converting his human form into a zip file of data that was now ‘taking a stroll’ through the Windows 95 mainframe.

The moonlight reflected off her rain soaked glasses, like a miner’s torch reflects off a cave wall, and as she lay on the picnic blanket listening to the canaries of the Amazon sing a ten part harmony, it sounded like a ring tone for mother earth herself.

If I told you that the basement level of my cordial factory harboured a laser guided battle rocket destined for the planet K-Mart, you probably wouldn’t believe me.

The contents of Mildred’s thermos flew into her face like a milky ghoul.

“Get the space bananas!” screamed Captain Zaxxon, for the holodeck gorilla was indeed going apeshit.
I awoke, tied to the trampoline, wearing only a Shania Twain t-shirt, with the sound of flashbulbs in my ears, again.

“Gold!” screamed Old Man Whiskers. “It’s gold! Right here!” The men splashed about in the silt river, waving their hats about in anticipation. “Cut!” screamed Julian. “You’ve found gold, not five cents behind the couch!” Just then, a bomb landed on the studio and everyone died.

It all started on a Sunday. No, hang on, maybe it was a Saturday… anyway, details are irrelevant. Okay, Thursday. Sorry, daylight savings threw me. Needless to say I wasn’t the best detective around. In fact, the night before, I’d left my wallet in a cab, and now I was down at the police station trying to crack my first case. Well, technically I was still at law school, so okay, not quite a detective… yet. But I’d read a lot of books. Okay, did I mention I was drunk? I should mention that I suppose. I hadn’t exactly volunteered to come down to the station. But I had a plan. First, I’d retrieve my pants, then my wallet, and then, by God, I was going to clean this city up. I needed a day job, you see, to pay my way through uni, and boy was I tidy with a mop and bucket. So that’s it, chapter one. By God, we all gotta start somewhere!

Struth be told

Negativity sucks.

It’s everywhere. Some days it feels like everyone’s complaining about everything. Whether it’s the state of the world, the local music scene, or the undercooked chips from KFC. Finding praise can be like digging for gold, whereas bitching pours out like dirty water from a broken mains. There’s something more socially acceptable about negativity. With a few beers under your belt you can wax sarcastic about the woes in your life and the artists you despise, safe in the knowledge that those in your party will retort with political ‘hear hears’. At best it keeps us critical and encourages debate, at worst it’s a lazy black laser setting fire to our surroundings, giving us the shallowest sense of security.

I wonder about Australia’s ‘tall-poppy syndrome’. It’s in our blood to hack and slash away at those figures who achieve success, sitting back in our instant expert chairs, boiling with perspective on how we’d do things differently. Some say this comes from our convict past. There is an attitudinal hangover that traces back to the days when Australia was made up of exported criminals, given accommodation in this fantastic new land. People were offered a second chance, and with that came a shared status of equality – a safety in numbers. It wasn’t such a welcome prospect for a neighbour to climb ahead of the pack or big note themselves. Perhaps we’re still outgrowing this nationalistic sense of low self-esteem.

There are those that people love to hate. Bono for his self-righteous political meddling. Michael Moore for his smug, preachy documentaries. Ben Lee for his precocious arrogance. What troubles me, is the level of white-hot venom aimed at such celebrities who dare to stick their heads out. The journalist in me is disappointed about the constant one-sidedness of the attacks. Isn’t Bono doing something practical and noble to tackle third world debt? Isn’t Michael Moore using the sensationalist tactics of the right-wing as an artistic tool? Could Ben Lee be given some credit for being so unapologetically passionate about his art? At what point is it less about their foibles and more about our own insecurities?

Negativity is a clever little bastard. Over time it reprograms your mind to automatically focus on the worst. If one of my songs doesn’t go well, then the whole gig is ruined. If there’s one piece of crap feedback amongst twenty good ones, guess which one makes my headlines? If something goes wrong, then my first instinct is to write off the day, the rest of the week, maybe the whole year… or life! I reckon there’s a ‘small-poppy syndrome’ – Australian’s also don’t tolerate an excess of self-pity. ‘Shut up – it’s hard for all of us!’ This isn’t helpful either – friendships need empathy. When it’s closing time in the bar of life, I don’t want to be at the end of another rant, looking around at the empty chairs where my mates used to be.

Negativity is a bad habit, like smoking and drinking. Being overly negative is a sure fire sign that you’re not taking care of your soul. Sure, the girl in Ghost World makes deadpan sarcasm look cool, but what starts out as a biting wit, can eventually turn into a relentless bitterness that quietly runs like a cancer through your outlook. This year, I’m making a real effort to focus on the positives in my life. It’s hard work! It’s like going to the gym. But like exercise, being positive has amazing flow-on effects. You begin to look and feel sexier, and so does the world around you. Enjoy negativity responsibly - in moderation.

Struth be told

I recently attended a job interview for a miniature species-related bar in Melbourne. Working for the man isn’t one of my strong points, but I have had some bar experience and a patchy resume that, in conjunction with the right joke, can sometimes get me over the line. Having said that, this year I’ve been laid off as a casual from two separate one-day-a-week jobs, so my part-time confidence is exactly that.

An un-complicated young man wandered out and led me to an interview room. He said we had to wait for three other people to turn up. Alarm bells rang. I scanned through my brain but couldn’t recall ever hearing anything good about group interviews – Virgin Blue first round… having to pretend to be farm animals. While I waited, the man handed out a form for the usual info and questions like ‘describe your perfect day’.

In the end it was just me, a prettyish girl, and an average uni dude. The interviewer fanned around some objects and instructed us to pick one. I went with the packet of blu-tak, presuming that it would be the easiest to make jokes about (smurf poo, anyone?). To kick off we played a memory game called Chinese Restaurant. This involved going round the circle saying ”I went to the Chinese restaurant and ordered the spring rolls,” remembering the previous item and adding another. The interviewer was so enthusiastic about the game he revealed he and his mates sometimes played it when they were out drinking. Thankful that I was not this man’s friend, I got up to about ten things before being undone by wonton noodles.

Next, the random items were brought into the fray. The man said we had to act like we were TV salesman, and do a three minute sales pitch on our item. By this point I was regretting two things: the fact I’d come, and the fact I’d chosen to wear a polyester suit with polyester shirt and tie. I may as well have been wearing an electric blanket wrapped in glad-wrap. The other two flapped about and got polite high school drama laughs. I trudged over to the far wall with my dignity on death-row.

“For centuries man has been plagued by the problem of how to stick things to a wall. In prehistoric times cavemen used dinosaur urine. The first fleet used sugar mixed with kangaroo droppings. At last we bring you a simple-to-use product. ‘But’, I hear you ask, ‘Now that I’ve stuck something up, what if I want to easily move it again?’ Well, watch this!” I decided to get a bit hands-on and offer a demonstration, grabbing paper from the desk. This wasn’t a great tactic as I was so nervous I got junkie hands. I could have been in Cosi – a mentally unhinged person putting on a play for sleepy school groups.

Next up, we had to read out our ‘perfect days’. Thinking it was a private writing exercise I’d gone into excruciatingly earnest detail. I said my girlfriend and I would bushwalk in Scotland, see a Beck gig at night, before retiring to a log cabin with an open fire to drink good gin. After silent nodding the prettyish girl went on. “Um, my perfect day would involve sunshine, grass and probably music.” While the interviewer told her that was great, I stared down at my forms, a 28 year old painfully overdressed man, reading out my inner-most desires at 10am so I could get the job of pouring beer into a glass.

A job I didn’t get.

Struth be told

I was first diagnosed with depression when I was 16. Clumsily, by a doctor who may as well have been doing a sudoku during the consultation. I went in to complain about not sleeping, which I had already self-diagnosed was caused by the medical anomalies of thinking too much and having complex sexual fantasies set in the speech and drama costume room. Next thing I know I’m being threatened with questions like “Have you ever felt sad?” and “Do you worry all the time?” I said I had and did, but denied any suicidal thoughts. According to Super-Scientific-Checklist-Beard that was enough to be charged with depression. I slumped in the musty beige seat, pale, acne annoyed and flat-haired as Dr Grumps sneezed out a prescription for anti-depressants and reached for the pamphlet ‘Buck Up Dickhead’.

I remember wandering out into the small town main street as a marked man. “YOU HAVE DEPRESSION!” The filthy neon billboard loomed down from above. I stared at a girl in the distance walking away – a girl from my class. I was different now. Separated. An invisible grey shroud kept me encased in glass. I sighed and thought about my after school routine of frozen Coke and CD shopping. The cold spring wind barged past my halfway legs. A reflection turned clockwise in my glasses as a car gruffed past. I was alone.

I threw the tablets in the bin. I was cranky at Dr Pillock’s emotionally careless handling of my precious self and got Dr Reality to give me a second opinion. I probably didn’t have depression, but the thought that I could was enough to evoke all the symptoms. I wasn’t exactly high-fiving with schoolmates over this truth nugget, but quietly self-checking as I passed off this viscous circle with the lunchtime basketball.

A decade later I would escort myself into my local GP and ask to go on mood enhancing medication. After my relationship’s two year anniversary was brutally marred by an inexplicably ferocious beating of the doldrums, I was treating it like a spiritual emergency. Something was clearly wrong. After ten years of writing my ups and downs off as ‘sensitive me’, I had to bite the carob bullet and admit that there was a distinctly alien presence behind my eyes. A black substance creeping through my veins. A first degree soul deficiency. This shit was chemical, and with my girlfriend weeping on her bed, oh-so fucking personal (cue Alien montage with Justin in pharmaceutically sponsored robot suit).

Nobody really wants to talk about mental illness, let’s face it. It scares everyone, and well it should. A broken leg is kind of cute and you can write your name on the cast. A broken mind is mysterious and bottomless and the thing of disturbing art and newspaper tragedies. We’re conditioned to hear the words ‘anti-depressants’ and assume the taker is some white eyed zombie pinned to the bed and talking backwards, or radiating twisted suicide frequencies and eying off your house as a site for a potential freak-out. Young people taking anti-depressants is very, very common. Despite repeated advertising campaigns, nobody’s very willing to name check mental illness with the same matter-of-factness as migraines or PMS.

After three months I’m planning to go off mine (correctly, tapering dosage) as quite frankly I miss crying and am unnerved by the numbing of my ‘sad reflexes.’ But I find the more I talk about the whole thing, and the more people thank me for bringing it up, the more connected to the world I feel and along with laughter, acceptance is damn good medicine.

Struth be told

John Lennon sang “Nobody told me there’d be days like these,” and can I just say ‘I HEAR YA BUDDY!’ (sorry to shout but I wanted to reach rock’n’roll heaven). Look, it’s not like I hadn’t been warned: my dear Nan, one of my greatest rockin’ role models, maintains her vaguely accusatory slogan “you’ve picked a very hard road in life.” (From the creators of “Justin, you have to have a dream.”) Of this I’ve been all too aware over the last six years of the nuclear shit-fight that is metamorphosing my art into a regular salary. I must admit there are days when all I can hear is Beck singing “I’m tired of fighting / fighting for a lost cause.”

In school you’re encouraged to study hard and get good marks and challenge yourself and believe in your heart and set goals. I did all that stuff. I took school very seriously. I took life very seriously. I wore Speedos to the swimming carnival for God’s sake – I was up on the blocks determined to break the boys freestyle record while everyone could see my penis. I decided to skip out on everything that was familiar to go to uni and even locked myself away for three months writing a play for my major writing project. Funny, the only job my bachelor of arts had me walking into was at the Canberra Labor Club.

In 2002 I won the Heywire competition for Canberra and subsequently got a foot in the door with triple j’s Morning Show, (literally, they had to call security) who gave me my own regular segment writing funny songs and dubbed me ‘The Bedroom Philosopher’. I worked part-time, wandering around the Pokie machines coming up with my own comedic jingles and jotting down lyrics on keno tickets. For the first time in my life I had national proof that I was good enough to make a living out of my art. I was excited and hungry for more.

I tried, and I tried, and I tried, but I couldn’t get no satisfaction. I just got Centrelink hassling me and music venue bookers saying “are you comedy or music or what?” I tried so very hard to make it work, but trying’s hard when you don’t have a blue print or a five year plan. I was all beer and novelty value and ‘bank of mum’. I couldn’t seriously sit down on the floor with butcher’s paper and plan out a professional strategy for national domination, I’d just end up writing a song or a shopping list (milk, eggs, sniper rifle).

I did the Melbourne Comedy Festival, with wobbly confidence, and I’m So Post Modern gatecrashed into the Hottest 100. I did a national tour in 2006 and people came to my gigs and seemed to be excited by what I was about. The same can’t be said for the record companies. Was I not pretty enough? Was my brain too broken? Did I miss their calls while I was in the shower? Should I have gone down on that talent scout dressed as a medieval mermaid? Hang on - that was a dream.

What’s my point? I’ve run myself into the ground trying to make my second album. I’m $10,000 in debt and I have 20c in my bank. I’m on anti-depressants and almost lost my girlfriend. I’ve finished my album but have no budget, manager or label to put it out. Where was the high school seminar about this? In the movies, musicians wander into studios, record hits, get massive and cheat on their wives. Who could prepare me for this confusing car prangle of a career plateau. Hey John, apparently all you need is love, 15 grand and friends in the industry.

Struth be told

MUSIC NEWS:

Pete Doherty is attempting to sue Wikipedia over misinformation written about him, by him, during a bender. He claims there should be more control over people ‘like him’ editing the online encyclopaedia. “You need a license to drive but not to be a historian it seems. Panda bugle ice cream,” he said, before collapsing.

Beck has reinvented himself once again with a re-release of Odelay. Fans say it’s the best thing he’s done since Odelay.

Rage Against The Machine have reformed, no longer able to stifle their musical mission to tear down capitalism. Also, they needed the money.

Following on from Regurgitator’s ‘Band in a Bubble’, Mariah Carey is going to record her next album in a bubble – as she only wants to breathe her own oxygen siphoned from underground caves in Bolivia.
Oasis will be releasing their own version of the retro arcade space game Galaga. In the game the ship will be replaced by their heads, and the alien ships replaced by music journalists telling them that they’ve gone shit.

Jack Johnson has formed a side project with U2’s The Edge. Jack said in an interview “I’m really excited, I’ve never written songs with edge before.”

Radiohead have been attacked over the recent ‘giving away’ of their album over the internet. Says one angry Canberra muso: “they’re like the JB Hi-Fi of the music world. How are us smaller bands supposed to compete with their prices?” He suggested that the Radiohead website be renamed ‘Crazy Thom’s’.

Bobby Mcferrin has reissued a cover of his ’80s hit Don’t Worry Be Happy. The new version contains the updated lyric “Worry, we’re fucked”. It’s the first track from the An Inconvenient Truth soundtrack.

Melbourne Mayor John So has formed an unlikely hip-hop partnership with former Olympic cyclist Kathy Watt, called So What.

Jet have been taken into custody over possession of stolen chords. Police say that Nick Chester was found in a Melbourne airport with a bag containing chords from several bands including AC/DC, Iggy Pop and The Kinks. Jet’s management claims that it’s perfectly innocent and that the band were just ‘borrowing’ them for rehearsals. AC/DC guitarist Angus Young claims he awoke to find several power chords missing from his power chord drawer.

Local talent showcase Indyfest is rumoured to be seeking funding from the Irwin Foundation. It’s rumoured that the concert will be renamed Bindifest.

Struth be told

THE ANSWER TO ANYONE WHO’S EVER ASKED THE QUESTION “I WONDER WHAT SORT OF LIFE JUSTIN HEAZLEWOOD REALLY LEADS?”

It was four in the morning the day I broke up with my one true love because I no longer possessed the emotional capacity to give her the love she deserves. I just smoked a cigarette and finished my last beer. I wandered inside thinking ‘gee I’m hungry… I wish there was something really easy for me to eat’. It was at this moment that I remembered bananas, and what an effective food source they can be for sad dickheads like me. At the moment I had this thought I saw that my housemate must have bought a bunch of bananas because there was a bunch of bananas sitting in the bowl platter thing where we put fruit in this house and gee we really should get a better name for that. At that moment I said this exact sentence out loud.
“Thanks bananas.”

I was thanking not only the fruit, but the kind gesture of the housemate for buying them so I could eat one in my ridiculous state. I then wandered into my room which I declared to myself ‘smelt like shit’, and proceeded to type on my keyboard the words you are reading, only pausing to take bites out of the banana. It was at this moment that I had the idea for some kind of contraption that sits next to your keyboard and is just the right size so you can put a banana in there and eat it while you type. I suppose I’d call it a ‘desktop banana aid’ and maybe I’d sell like two, one to me and another to some idiot who actually wanted to buy a memory stick but was illiterate, and too proud to ever tell anyone. So, in conclusion, I’m a 28 year old man, still up at four in the morning writing mostly insane, annoying little folk songs and recording them on his mobile phone because I left my cassette walkman at a gig last night, only stopping for cigarettes and beer, and now, because they’ve run out, I can only half eat a banana and stop to write this story about what I think accurately depicts an average moment in my new life.

WHY FACEBOOK IS SHIT
I just changed my relationship status to single. Facebook responded by placing an ad with some Chlamydia-ridden slut’s bleach blonde face and the words “don’t have a girlfriend – meet tons of local hot singles for free at mate 1.” Yeah, tons of local hot singles ’cos they’re all FAT! Conclusion: Facebook isn’t your friend. It isn’t your buddy. It’s a cold, calculating salivating money addicted web-crook, preying on the pathetically self-centred strand of the ego that insists on synthesising self-validation through the commoditisation of friends, who are reduced to minimum-res tokens to collect, while publicly broadcasting results of tests such as which national flag are you – all of which is magnetted to the virtual fridge of all your directionless, charmless high school acquaintances who, if ever faced with your leering, manipulatively fashionable self at a real life party would be happily staring at the cupboards glassy eyed and sans-plan as opposed to striking up a heartfelt conversation beginning with the Nobel prize nominated opening line of ‘how’s things?’

This is me on a good day.

Struth be told

I found life much more hilarious after I broke up with my one true love. Yeah. Hard to believe, huh? Correct. Such a paradox. An oxymoron if you will. Yes, I just called you an oxymoron. For I have no respect for you. Honest. I’m not just being facetious or overly controversial for the sake of evoking a response.

Sometimes I am just so crippled by unease about my own upbringing that I assume the rest of the world has had a better life than me and that you have probably just like, I dunno, paid off a car that you went halves in with your parents who both have full time jobs and planned family barbecues that were hilarious and had cool half-drunk conversations with you when you were 16 about their past and made you realise how decent these people were and playfully ruffled your hair when you were rabbiting on about some high school crush you had and caught you off guard with their graceful perspective. Dads with Steely Dan T-shirts and attractively greying facial hair. Mums with beyond-their-years luscious red locks and room filling laughs. Neat houses in prime inner city locations, but always an underlying sense of modesty and ‘oh this place, we do our best but it’s no paradise.’ And actually you’re living in fucking mansions with trust funds acquiring an extra figure a year which you can access in your gap year and buy $5,000 Epitone guitars and take advantage of the childhood of Kinks and Byrds albums that your dad brought you up on and fool about in expensive jeans and come up with some jangly open chords and wail on some nonsense to your painfully side swept fringed friends off their block on pricey gin and accidentally stumble on some easily marketable fortuitously trendy retro psych-rock that your swollen bank accounts can accommodate with a super producer who turns your handful of ideas into some radio friendly pop-smart EP that gets so ‘accidentally’ sent to the most influential indie-website that so effortlessly emblazons it with its gold seal of oh-so-fleeting approval, enough to get some equally ‘now’ kids with parents helping them pay off their Mac G5’s so they can get their underground film movement off the ground to your gigs where your ‘double garage’ rock is spurted out under a safety blanket of reverb and drums riding higher that your ironic ‘70s jeans, surmising to such a potentially awesome racket that the artfully aloof crowd for fear of being the only ones not reading between the lines of your genre-defying genius are forced to bang their fifty dollar hair waxed hands together and anoint their shrill lips with over fermented European beers that feel good against their hot little nail bitten hands ‘cos they find life “so unfair like, today I saw a homeless guy on the street and I would have given him money but I was halfway through a c heeseburger and like, y’know?!”

Yeah, well, where am I during all this? I’m standing up the back next to the slimy A&R rep who left his wife of 20 years for his teenage daughter’s best friend, who despite an arse to declare war for also has a wicked sense of humour and isn’t laughter so healing when you’re a pseudo paedophile in Italian leather shoes. And he really thinks these kids have got something, and through his chauvinistic, ego smoking poker games knows the bloke who runs some big label can get these kids hooked into the right ‘mechanics.’ I’m standing next to this guy. I’m not smiling, not frowning, not drinking, breathing or blinking. I’m very disappointed and at my best guess it would take at least one lifetime of lending me money and introducing me to your good-looking friends so we can fool about on your cousin’s waterbed to prove to me that you’re worthy of being exempted from my A-1 100% counsellor proof cheer destroying scorn.

Struth be told

THINGS ON E-BAY I SHOULDN’T HAVE BID ON

Nine-volt dual motion novelty chin massager (still in box).

Rage. The Complete First Series. 900 VHS set.

Johnny Cash endorsed casserole dish with patented ‘ring of fire’ technology.

Five speed motorised beanbag (some damage).

Novelty t-shirt ‘I’m a few Ps short of a degree – University of Canberra’.

Complete set of ‘great moments in illegal drag racing’ commemorative stamps.

Vintage bag of assorted rocks dated to Jurassic era. Authentic! (Paperwork missing).

Laminated Daryl Somers promotional poster (some damage, including signature).

Burnt purple three piece corduroy suit (allow three weeks for postage and three decades for fashion).

Set of talking Knight Rider coasters. Put your coffee down and hear KITT say “Careful Michael it’s hot.”

Britney Spears board game (pieces missing).

Pair of antique speakers (Harry and Irma Carter, good to go – will talk about war, religion or petrol prices).

Antique Amstrad CPC 464 computer. Comes with joystick, monitor and 50 games – some still loading (64k memory can be emailed).

Vintage Charles and Diana commemorative dinner set (will separate).

Copy of self-help book I’m okay, You’re okay (as is).

Struth be told

There’s never a more vulnerable time in one’s life than when one steps outside the door of the hairdressers. 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 hairdressers just like cutting hair. The initial consultation always goes amiably. They ask what I’d like done, while thoughtfully running thumb and forefinger over the back. I answer them with conviction on par with the lawyer from The Castle – including the word ‘vibe’. They seem to understand. I take my glasses off, and in my short sighted state I miss the split-second glint in their eye as they pick up the scissors, eyes boring into the slice fest that is my plump, ungroomed head, mouth salivating at the thought of sinking their blades into me, like a blackbird arching its toes as it dive-bombs a strawberry patch.

Where does the blueprint go wrong? Part of the problem is the hairdressers insistence on multi-tasking. This involves calculating and implementing precise artistic incisions while padding out inane conversation. You wouldn’t expect your doctor to be halfway through surgery before demanding to know how uni’s going. The verbal screensaver also gets in the way of the relaxing, therapeutic element. With silence I can let hormones and imagination take over and pretend there’s something faintly sexual happening. (With me, getting change at McDonald’s can be faintly sexual; it’s called ‘I’m an art-house film’ syndrome).

HINT: Get your haircut on a Wednesday as it’s too late for “what did you do on the weekend?” and too early for “what are you doing on the weekend?”

The hairdressers most important training comes into play in the closing ‘smoke and mirror’ phase. This involves a complex array of blow-drying, poofing and fiddling with all manner of hyper-paste-turbo-wax-grit-putty-factor-fourteen products, which are all made from recycled Ghostbuster slime. These are used to achieve the painstakingly effortless ‘bed-hair’ look that is guaranteed to last up to three seconds after you leave. (I’ve found better results by being so depressed about my haircut I stayed in bed for a week). This leads to the barber’s money shot. The moment when you are reminded how powerless you really are, strapped in a black cocoon, hair littering the floor like a balding shagpile. There is no greater false gesture than the ‘showing of the back’ for approval. As you stare from your bowl head – flat as a burnt match – to the gleaming eyes of the hairdresser, you remember this is one luxury you just can’t afford.

For the last two years I’ve attended one of the fanciest hairdressers in Melbourne, who recently put the price up from $65 to $85. “Is that because of the drought?” I quipped, getting nothing from the girl at the counter. We had been on a good wicket; they didn’t talk much and left my hair at an acceptable Graham Garden/Jarvis Cocker type length. But last week I made the mistake of including the word ‘shorter’ in my description. That’s it, next time I’m getting my fringe insured. Just call me the indie Merv Hughes.

Struth be told

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 Never Ending Story, except 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 a ‘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 grandparents’ nature. I was home.

Ask anyone who was there, in the late ’90s, the op shopping scene along the north-west coast of Tasmania was electric. We’re talking a strip of five small towns, four shops a piece, all brimming with art-deco collectables fuelled by an army of fashionable seniors that were dropping like flies. It was a gold rush of vintage before the word was even invented. Geometrical paisley ties - 20c. Press stud country shirts - $2.

Three-piece pinstripe suits – not enough… AND you’d get change. Surpassing the financial cha-ching was the elation of pulling a chocolate brown body shirt out of the rack and holding it aloft like a fisherman of thrift. After exposure to a hundred vomit-inducing patterns, the payoff of snaring a prized coat hanger of ultra style was incomparable. The op shop held out its arms and wrapped me in a past more friendly and classy than my present, and knitted me a rewards card of wholesome promise.

Like a Kamahl record left out of its cover, nothing lasts forever - by the turn of the century I had moved to Canberra to study, and found the scene there to be weird at best. While there was a plethora of deceased spinsters, there was also a leisure-trove of art-school hipsters protective of their ‘native racks’. Then, reports started flooding in about attacks on op shops back home. Tales of sharp-tongued fashionistas marching in, stripping frocks and bargaining down the price with such ferocity that retail biddies had to hide behind piles of plastic bags. Rumour had it garments were then being siphoned to big-city boutiques and given triple figure price tags. As incidences of metro-retro ram raids continued to swell, I kept my head and fingers down, landing myself the odd suit or shirt.

After graduating, I returned to my home village of Burnie for a brief holiday, but was rudely awakened. The normally chirpy ladies behind the counter were pale and edgy, their trembling hands wrapped hard around knitting needles. I only found one half-decent bonds t-shirt and almost spat dust - they were asking $6! I used it to gently mop the tears that ran down my cheeks like liquid crochet.

Today, I find myself based in the indie dictatorship of Melbourne where the streets are lined with a polyester plague of aggressively ironic scenesters. My last second hand purchase was a 70’s brown and white checked sports jacket. It cost $70. I stared into space as a humourless waif filled out my lay-by form. For a fisherman of thrift, this was how it felt to visit a trout farm, then sleep with a prostitute.

For now my quest for the Holy Grail (burnt orange pinstripe three-piece suit) shall continue – a truly never ending second hand story that I am happy to tell, first hand.

Struth be told

When I was 15 I recorded my first album of songs. This was done in my bedroom, on a little cassette walkman with a stereo microphone blu-takked to the indoor clothesline. Sitting on the edge of my bed, I aimed to nail each track in one take, but I’d usually stuff up somewhere along the line and have to rewind back to the start. I tried ‘dropping in’ halfway through a song, but it left me with more pops and clicks than a retirement home. Naturally, the recording’s were no-fi and dusted with tape hiss, but they captured the essence of the songs, and the whole process prepared me for many of the factors a musician in the studio can face.

I gave the album the title Ad-Liberation (my affinity with puns blossomed from an early age) and cover art, made up of a wobbly texta drawing of the planet earth with arms holding a sign that read ‘the end is nigh’. (A sense of pre-millennium tension as early as 1995). The songs themselves were structurally ambitious, usually running over five minutes in length, with about eight verses and a prog-folk ‘strum solo’, (a genre created by the cat sitting on the lyrics). The subject matter was equally bold. One song, I Will Never Leave You, was about a father returning home from war while another, Thought She Loved Me, was an angsty break-up ballad including the immortal lines “I loved you” (x4). All of this from someone whose only Kiss so far had been their greatest hits. I just figured that’s what songs had to be about, like an emotional version of playing dress-ups.

While my production values were primitive, I still strived to improve my sound. In 1996 I experimented by moving my studio into the bathroom as I liked the acoustics better. The odd feeling of sitting on the toilet with the seat down kept me alert, and I informed Mum if she was going to knock on the door then it had to be in 4/4 time. In grade ten, when my peers were playing NBA Jam and making prank calls, I was singing about existentialism. “Time moves so fast, you forget who you are”. I was a wise old sage with a bowl cut and a Kuta Lines polar fleece.

I never suffered too much anxiety when it came to listening back to the recordings. I’d always been fine with hearing my own voice, and felt safe hanging out inside my own sonic cubbyhouse. Playing them for my family was a different matter. Add a human to the mix and the songs became instantly embarrassing. I’d press play on the stereo before running outside and hiding under the trampoline. Listening to the tapes recently, I could have sworn they were done on high speed dubbing, but no, my voice really was that high. At that stage the only balls dropping were the ones hit to me at cricket.

I look back on those days with fondness, when music was an activity that I did for the sheer joy it gave me. There was no business side to consider, or performance schedule to maintain. There was no chance to over-think or overcook the recordings. The songs rolled off the guitar already finished, all I had to do was catch the butterfly in the net. It’s good to have that texta drawn blueprint for simplicity, reminding me of the power of unaccompanied guitar and voice, and the days when I’d sit watching the tape wheels go round and round, fantasising about my own time in the sun.

Struth be told

It’s 7:13 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 15 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 whose underwing has the most foreboding set of weapons. It has been coasting along the skyline, away from the core of the battle, but now ducks its nose into a vacant pocket of airspace, unloading its cache one by one. Planes in the distance continue to perpetually loop, seemingly unaware of the threat. I watch as each missile glides in the slipstream, before arching gracefully skywards and reversing its trajectory. I’m surprised to see heat-seeking technology present amongst these World War II-era planes. I lose track of them amidst the cross fire, but a few seconds later hear a succession of deep explosions as each rocket meets its target. One pilot has managed to bail out, and his purple and white patterned parachute floats forlornly into the dark blue sea.

A moment later the pilot emerges from the shore, legs trudging through white foam. He’s cradling a guitar, and my instant concern is what the salt water could do to the strings. The pilot walks up the beach towards our table. He is dry now and still wearing a leather helmet and goggles. He proceeds to reach into his pocket and pull out a ten and five dollar note.

“I need to buy some breakfast, but have no idea where to start. It would really help me out if you could take this and buy me the best thing you can find.”

I am concerned. I don’t particularly want to help this man, I feel like I have other things to do. My girlfriend turns to me and speaks quietly. “I’ve really got to be getting home soon, I’ve got a lot of reading to do for uni.”

I would rather just leave as planned with her, but suddenly have a World War II pilot dependent on me. I am not comfortable with this, and the sense of responsibility curdles into deep seeded dread.
I consider for a moment another option, of taking the man’s money, combining it with my own, and offering him a $20 note. While I cannot buy him breakfast, I could at least boost his funds and perhaps give him a tip on a decent cafe.

My dream ends.

ANALYSIS:
War scene: Last night I watched a few minutes of Pearl Harbour on TV.

Heat Seeking Missiles: I’ve been playing a lot of Mario Kart lately.

Pilot with guitar: A metaphor for my relationship with music. This year I have written a number of songs as direct cathartic responses to feelings of distress.

Pilot asking for help: Lately I’ve been finding buying food a monumental chore. My dread in helping the pilot reflects my current inner unrest, and feelings of not having the emotional resources to offer anyone.

Girlfriend needing to do uni work: My girlfriend has recently become a university tutor and is much busier.

Struth be told

It was late Sunday night and I needed a drink. I’d just completed the joyless task of shopping for Nelly Furtado for my cousin’s birthday. I’d been scuttle-booting past the deranged neon and shadows for 15 minutes, but everything looked shut. An icy breeze cruised in, attacking my jacket and upsetting a flutter of papers. One of them stuck - a fluoro yellow flyer. It was a grainy picture of a 1950s family sitting down to dinner. Above in huge bold type was written ‘TENSION - Indie Night Sundays.’ I brushed it off and it somersaulted down an alley behind me. Past the bins and graffiti was the faint outline of a doorway.

I strolled over. I could hear the thump of a drum beat inside. On the ground I noticed a metal chisel glinting dimly in the lamp light. I picked it up and jammed it in the door. With a hard yank it prized open. A nicotine and sweat fuelled sauna wafted out. The relentless rhythm now met jangling guitar, looming bass and a static male vocal: “London calling upon the zombies of death.” I walked up the derelict stairwell, stained with dead stickers and homemade band posters. As I neared the top the song finished, trailed by gloomy silence. The familiar riff of The Pixies’ Here Comes Your Man rang out as I entered the musty space. The dance floor was empty and above it a black mirror ball hung still. At the far end was a long, dimly lit bar with empty fridges. I took a couple of nervous steps forward. At first I didn’t see them. It wasn’t until they moved their heads in unison to face me that I noticed their fringes swishing like wiper blades. Lined up along the walls on either side of me were a fleet of identically dressed young men and women. They all had tight black jeans, studded belts, band t-shirts and earphones snaking down into shoulder satchels. My heart shuddered with self-consciousness. I got out my phone and pretended to text - my eyes darting in the peripheries. The line-up seemed to be getting closer, but their legs weren’t moving.

“Here comes your ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma.” The song was skipping. My head was pounding. The black fleet were advancing on me.

I squinted up at the tallest of them. His eyes were all white and his hair had globs of gel and blood through it. His skin was acidic and peeling.

He opened his black rimmed mouth.

“Bands!” The rest of them followed in monotone.

“Bands!” They were biting their nails so fiercely their fingers were bloody.

“Coldplay?” I stuttered.

“No!” they screamed. “Indie bands!” I racked my brain - trying to think of the most obscure one I could.

“Vampire Weekend!” I yelled. The throng were frothing at the mouth with excitement. They stunk of rotting leather.

“More bands!” they screamed. Now they were all around me, poking me and whipping me with their earphones. I struggled.

“The Billets? Cuttlefish? Wendy’s Pudding?” They could tell I was making them up. They were angry and started in on me. Their pointy boots stabbed like blunt knives and their stubble tore at my skin. Gagging for breath, I wrestled open my backpack and clutched my fingers around the Nelly Furtado CD. I wrenched up a t-shirt and plunged the disc into the pale, papery skin. No blood came. There was rock star screaming and writhing, as the group lifted off me as one. Gasping, I rolled on my side and watched as they clunked open a heavy wooden trapdoor and one by one slithered into the underground.