The one where I curse Jimmy Barnes for fucking with my sex life

In 1990 I was a long way from having sex. Too long, I thought in my later teens. Nonetheless, the particulars of what to do in the bedroom - apart from pull on your PJs and hit the hay - wasn't even on my list of things to discover.

I was also a long way from understanding metaphor and hyperbole in pop music. But even through the ignorance of childhood, some messages from the blanket of pop culture make it to the subconscience to lay in wait.

And what does this have to do with Jimmy Barnes?

LET’S MAKE IT LAST ALL NIGHT

THIS COULD BE THE LAST TIME I MAKE LOVE TO YOU

LET’S MAKE IT LAST ALL NIGHT

BABY GIVE ME SOMETHING TO HOLD ON TO

EVEN IF WE CAN’T MAKE IT RIGHT

BABY MAKE IT LAST ALL NIGHT

Let's Make It Last All Night - Barnesy’s stomping ballad off the classic gruntfest album 'Two Fires' - was everywhere in the summer of 1990. And nowhere more than from the shiny-red-plastic-shelled two speaker radio cassette deck perched above the faux-wood-panelled microwave in our family home kitchen. My mum had the commercial radio blaring from sunup to sundown, and the pained romantic ambitions of Barnesy and Farnsey and Ninah Cherry and Lionel Ritchie all leaked into my little putty brain somewhere.

Jump cut to years later. Through a series of cruel circumstances and what could be only called ‘bad luck’ I was a frustrated 17-year-old virgin. I realise eminently now why the turn of phrase insists you ‘lose’ your virginity, since not only was I a changed manchild after that blustery dusk on the beach, but I also cannot remember a single detail of the actual event. It’s lost. Gone. In a haze of relief and confused expectations. But one thing I do know – it didn’t last all night.

And as my unlikely sex life sputtered along, this simple fact plagued me. I could NEVER make it last all night. Even if by some magical alignment of the stars I managed to make it last over 15 minutes, I was near clinical exhaustion. And sometimes those sitcom-length dalliances were worth the effort for the other party. Yet lurking inside me somewhere, sabotaging my sexual confidence and undermining my mojo, was the belief that if I really, really cared I should make it last all night. Especially since at that age I believed that every night could be that last time I could do it.

And in my mind was a picture of Barnesy circa 1990 – looking like a man who could undoubtedly make it last all night. For several on the trot if his lady-friend demanded.

I’ve since realised it isn’t possible. At least not without Viagra, a drip and some serious tantric training. I’m not sure when I finally, consciously acknowledged that perhaps Barnesy wasn’t speaking literally and I could relax the expectations I’d put on myself. Maybe it was in the scarce moments of honesty between my male friends where I realised more than 15 minutes isn’t a bad innings. Maybe it was discovering more valuable things to a relationship than a superhuman sexual stamina. Or maybe it was just seeing Barnesy looking really fucking old.

The one where I beg for clemency

Every relationship I have ever gone into and everything that has happened in those times I've had only the best intentions. Regardless of how miserably things might have fallen apart, how far I might have turned away or how much I might have undermined the course of things, I was never cynical or calculating or cruel. And no matter how empty I left anyone, I never meant to take anything.

Is that so hard to come at? Is it possible to resolve such ruin with honest, hopeful intent? Is is possible to forgive?

Maybe. But I'm not so sure who is to be forgiven.

The one where my inscrutable pleb voyerism is given further fuel

Good news fellow trash hounds! Great news in fact!

The teenage try-hard suburban-terrorist serial-pest sensation Corey Delaney is joining the presenting team of Big Brother 08.

I had heard that after his infamous Ringwood 'party' - blown outrageously out of proportion - The Corey had wrangled himself a publicist. "What the fuck for?" I thought. The kid held a lameo high school party that got crashed by a hoard of bored deadshit punks who trashed the manicured whitewash neighbourhood. The fact that the party details went viral through myspace isn't testament to his part planning savvy or his marketing nous, just proof of the saturation of internet social networking sites and evidence that the term 'friend' has been correspondingly made a laughing stock.

But, kudos to his parents. The whole situation reeks of a frustrated stage mother smelling her longed-for vicarious dream waft by and seizing the chance with all her wily spirit. I guarantee you The Corey wasn't the brains behind his media saturation. So, well played mum...well played.

And when he's gracing the screen as a BB host or special commentator or running joke, don't jump to cussing the yellow-sunnied one himself. Spare some vitriol for his elders behind the scenes.

There's nothing like suburban opportunism, is there?

The one where I ruefully pre-empt my descent into shameful trashdom

It's coming again. That time of year when the putrid bottom-dwellers of society are shepherded cooing and drooling into a theme-park box and - fed on carefully rationed humiliation and each others' unique bigotry - and encouraged to pet and prod each other in an attempt to elicit even more evidence of objectionable breeding.

Big Brother '08.

And I'll be watching.

Against my better judgement. Against the integrity and culture and intellectual grooming efforts of my parents and friends. Against everything that is worthy and sacred in this world, I'll be watching.

I used to go to lengths hiding my irrational fascination. Program the VCR. Invent false appointments. Deny, deny, deny. I would whip myself with rusty barbed wire after every episode, feeling like a horny Catholic boarder guiltily cleaning himself up under the mothball-crusted blankets seeing the Virgin Mary waving vaguely down towards him. I was ashamed.

Then, something changed. I realised that as an anthropological record of the perverse phenomenon of B-grade fame, as a celebration of the spectacle in the inane, as evidence of the power of the pack mentality on both sides of the voting lines, and as a chance to out and out ridicule bogans, Big Brother equals entertainment.

Where else would a turkey slap be possible on national commercial television (even as a reference)? Where else do cattle drovers and uni dropouts transcend their station to be known to the wider public - albeit briefly - by their first name only? Where else would a mother/daughter pair celebrate their anointment with matching silicone surgeries? Where else do hoards of applicants pine for the chance to humiliate themselves and others to the basest level? And where else are we implicitly given license to heckle and deride the contestants from the comfort of our own couches?

Nowhere!

It is our right - NAY! our duty - to embrace this exposé of the vile and the cheap surrounding us. To watch so we can understand the lowest common denominator that drives our economy and our politics (these people vote! they shop!). To watch so we may find glorious self-righteous comfort in the primary fact that we aren't them.

Well...for the most part. Pass the poultry there, would you?

The one where we turn that frown upside down

Feeling beige? Need some colour? Thinking of trying to sniff that eon's old bottle of Clag just in the hope of feeling something new?

This should flush your cheeks with freshly oxygenated blood!

I present to you, dear cyberspace, the full, unexpurgated, verbatim Mis-Sent Booty Call Text Message.

Drum roll, please...

Hi! baby gal its u boi T,

bn missn u lately + wana make lov 2 u wif oil massage al ova ur body,

jst u n me,

am tnkn bout u wif me unda da blnkt.

Am also holdn ma dick tnkn dat he shud b slipin through u're sweet thais

n 2 u're pretty tight, juicy blak pussy ud u "sayn

baby T want u evry nite on bed wif me makn me cum few tyms n say u're name

+ dat u lov me so mach.

lol

ey naw i @list snd u sam nasty jok dat u wana it?

Holla sxc

I hemorrhaged. Then I had conniptions. Not just because of the crassness and complete lack of subtlety, somewhat resembling a caveman slaughtering a polar bear and affixing the jaws to his crotch in an infantile display of breeding superiority. Not just because of the gob-smackingly atrocious spelling and grammar, or the collections of letters I just flat out don't understand ("sam nasty jok dat u wana it?" Where is the question there?! Who is Sam?! What the fuck is "wana it"?).

No. All that pales in comparison to the startling fact that some educationally stunted man-whore sent this cringeworthy tome to the wrong fucking number. I needn't point out - although I will for clarity's sake - that the eponymous T of the message was NOT me, a hysterical coincidence of names though it is. This message was sent after midnight on a Saturday night only to arrive at the phone of a young lady who didn't recognise the number and does not now - nor ever has had - a blak pussy. Too bad for our hero T-boi, who may have felt rejected by the lack of reply and had to go home to finish his horny self off, all because of his incorrect digiting.

Although I can't imagine T's chances would have been significantly increased had he keyed in the correct number for his "baby gal".

Or maybe the chump would've got laid. Who knows. I just don't understand the kids today. But ridicule?

You bet I can drop that boi.

The one where we celebrate the death of the self-important gun-toting asshole

What kind of total fuckhead has a charmed career, is adored by millions, leads a gold-spoon life in retirement and then becomes the president of the National Rifle Association? Keeping the circle of violence alive from behind gated property walls.

Congratulations Charlton Heston. The karma bus took its time getting around, but it finally stopped at your door and sucked your filthy life away. I can only hope that you were shot repeatedly in your impotent cock and bled to death rather than died peacefully in your sleep as reported.

Adios fucker.

The one where we fill in the blanks with make believe

"I'll squash a fucking grapefruit in ya fucking face ya moll"

That's what I said to my memory after it again failed to summon up the resemblance of what I did only two days ago.

"How has your weekend been?" asks a well-meaning friend.

Ummm... No idea. Can't remember. Even though the oldest memories I'd have to dust off are in the region of 48 hours.

"Hey! I'm the fucking boss here Chachi - you're here for my benefit! And if I say jump to and remind me what Friday night consisted of, you goddamn well jump! Capishe?"

But no dice.

So what chance do I have over years, or decades. When I'm trying to piece together a picture of What Has Happened To Me So Far for the benefit of a new doctor or nurse (wink wink), for example.

The emotional continuum is there, and by all means that is one - very valid - kind of history. But it isn't rated as much authenticity as factual, chronological continuum. Unfortunately the facts are more elusive than they seem. Just because it is the historical truth doesn't mean it is privileged in memory.

Most of my accounts of the past are accurate on emotion and vague on detail. Does it matter? Not to me, but people think they can know you by what has happened to you.

So on the occasions when it is necessary to tell the stories, and my memory puts up doughnuts, I have fleshed out my reliable emotional memory with some unreliable 'facts'. They may be historically accurate, they may not.

But people want a story to hang their ideas of you on, and emotional honesty often doesn't cut it. We'd love it to, but we hunger for a narrative of events for our picture of people. I'm admitting that sometimes I fudge it. Some things might be too painful to accurately revive, others so subsumed by the associated emotion that accurate accounting has long been rendered moot.

But in the end, if it is true to how it felt, do the details matter so much? Well, maybe they do, which is bad news for a chump like me with a monkey behind the memory desk.

Most Definitely

The Beethoven of the spoken word. The Picasso of rap. The Brando of hip hop. This is the humble face of the most talented recording artist of the last 15 years. Every genre. Flat.

I can't make you listen to music you don't want to listen to. Only despots and school principals have that power. But if I could, I'd jam a boot in your mouth, gaff some headphones on your scone and play this man's catalogue. And you would see a light. Maybe not the light, but there would definitely some sort of illuminatory process.

Mos Def, I salute you.

The (not so) Modest Mouse

*(This guy is not in Modest Mouse. Read below for clarification of his origins.)

They sure are a weird rag tag bunch of guys. A Ronny Wood lookalike on one end, a bulging punker at the other, Mormon twins on two huge drum kits and a drunken sailor in between – but god damn did they make a spectacular wall of sound. Yes they did. The sonic orgy that is Modest Mouse played to a packed out and spellbound Palace Theatre last night. As a magical surprise treat I was among the rapture. Gloriously supported by the soaring pop of Sparkadia (keep an ear out peoples – these kids are going to go MASSIVE) and belting post-something rock of Hot Hot Heat, it was mystifying and satisfying and automatic and hydromatic. It was greased lightning.
But I was left troubled by some questions. Questions beyond music and spectacle, beyond bleeding ears and cooing souls. Questions that probe at the very essence of who we are. When is a moustache no longer ironic? Is frontman Steve from Hot Hot Heat directly related to Lionel Ritchie? Does crazy help sell art?

And do you think I have an answer?

Well, I do actually...

!. A moustache is no longer ironic as of 2006. Now it's just dirty lip hair. Some people dig that, but it sure isn't an ironic "how bad were the late 70's" or "I'm cool enough to pull this off by the very fact I'm doing it" statement. FYI.

@. Yes. Steve is biologically half Lionel Ritchie and half Bob Dylan. Unknown to most of the musical and gossip-column world, the two ageing musos are unnaturally infatuated with each other, and have been for some time. They formed a secret genetic research and IVF laboratory many many years ago, and Steve Bays is the result of their labour of love. DNA strands from Ritchie and Dylan were fused, injected in a hollowed out egg, implanted in an Innuit virgin and delivered to the loving arms of a Canadian adoptive family. True story.

#. Crazy has, and always will, add to reputation. And reputation, as much as talent, sells art.

There. Cracking night out overall. Any questions?