The last time I wore anything with a motif on it was my bile-inducing bottle-green school jumper; complete with a crest involving a javelin. Since then I’ve despised clothes with “stuff” on it. From the…
- Senior Lecturer, The University of Melbourne
What’s about 9cm long, garish pink, and - judging by the pictures on the packaging - guaranteed to make women of all ages and races deliriously happy? The morning after the Navy Yard shooting, I walked…
In a favourite scene from the sitcom Roseanne, family patriarch Dan sat down his new-to-masturbation son DJ. “The funny thing about this,” says Dan during the heart-to-heart, “is that even though it’s…
I’m big on spells. Not like the hubble bubble, toil and trouble witchcrafty palaver, but the idea of being in a trance after a terrific book or film. That lovely bubble of having just experienced something…
Given that I played Jagged Little Pill quite a lot in 1995, I’ve got many Alanis Morissette memories. A favourite involves being at her concert and - choreographed perfectly to illustrate the “when you…
I’m currently residing in North Carolina, a state where, in only a handful of days, a law will come into effect that permits evermore concealed weapons in evermore places. You know, like bars for example…
Aside from the thorough creepiness of children singing love songs, my main problem with TV singing contests is the karaoke-ness of it all. Singers - many able to hit all the right notes and sound thoroughly…
When discussing pain, my brother has a habit of likening every malady to childbirth. So intense is his agony. Dad’s approach is a tad less histrionic. His test centres on whether something hurts more or…
I held out as long as I could. Truly, I did. I was all set to let the story slide into obscurity. To not feed the purpose-built publicity stunt ever more bloody attention. But then then I kept thinking…
It’s an image as familiar as the mea culpa sympathetic TV interview. Bloke has the affair, gets caught with the sex worker, tweets out poorly lit photos of his dangly bits. He does the deed, delivers the…
Slobodan Milosevic went to trial. Bali got bombed. Dudley Moore died and right up there with the memorable moments of 2002 was that 2.8 million Australians sat down and watched The National IQ Test. Because…
Him: I like Baroque music, what about you? Me: I’m a bit more into Baroque-n Social Scene. An exchange that encapsulates the oddity of spending lots of time with a lovely bloke who is pretty much the Anti-Lauren…
Quite a few years ago now - I was an undergrad at the time - I was writing on sadomasochism in cinema. My rationale, of course, was simply any excuse to rewatch one of my all time favourite films, The…
Like the time in the 1990s when he pronounced that he wouldn’t watch Seinfeld because he didn’t like the promos. Like the time in the 2000s when he parted ways with Law and Order because it was “becoming…
No Country for Old Men, according to my brother, is the one film that breaks the book-always-being-better rule. I remember one thing about seeing it. The precise wording of a text message I got while half-asleep…
I don’t have any photographs in my apartment. I don’t have any on my desk at work either. They weren’t all destroyed in some spectacular blaze and no, my employer hasn’t issued any decor mandates. I just…
My dad has a unique brand of amnesia centered exclusively on the film Outbreak. He’s seen it hundreds of times, he owns it on DVD, but if it’s ever mentioned he swears black and blue that he’s never seen…
Over the last couple of weeks, nearly every exchange I’ve had with anybody has involved me espousing the greatness of the mystery mini-series Top of the Lake. This piece is not about Top of the Lake per…
Sculpture being an exception, but generally I’m not all that interested in seeing “stuff” in museums. When I first visited London I went to the home of Charles Dickens. You could see his inkwell. Oh God…
Not that “date” was ever a word I was partial to anyway, but my lifelong avoidance of it was validated in a cafe last year. The seven-year-old that I’d been corrupting for the day spontaneously asked…
In 2003, festooned on the sides of buildings and train stations and overpasses around Melbourne was a series of advertisements for Heaven ice creams. Each billboard boasted variants of the very same image…
In an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, protagonist Larry David is asked by his new friend - rapper Krazee-Eyez Killa - whether he likes oral sex: “You know, it’s … I’m a little … I like it … I like it…
Given that they’ve just released a new album - and it’s a swoon-worthily terrific one - I’d quite like to claim that The National can do no wrong. This of course, is the blatantest of blatant lies. And…
I’d consider myself the babysitter of last resorts. While I quite like kids, I’m a tad anxious around them. I’m convinced that they - like cats - can see through me somehow. And let’s face it - and as…
While Home and Away isn’t on my regular rotation, I laughingly remember the TV ads in the lead up to the arrival of The River Boys. In place of chest hair these lads had tattoos. A clue, seemingly, to…
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