Author Archives: justin

This article was originally published in Frankie Magazine #20. It was in response to the man myth – the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.

This saying was first coined by the United States Chief Medical Surgeon Ernie Monbulk in Connecticut in 1943. At the time he was giving a lecture to a group of medical interns, in a stifling lecture theatre during an intense heat wave. What he actually meant to say was ‘the way to a man’s heart is through the pulmonic valve,’ however, it was such a hot day! His mind got to drifting, and, as documented in his 1963 memoir ‘The forty year old surgeon,’ at the time of his infamous blunder he was actually thinking about the mermaid cake his dear mother made him for his eleventh birthday. Except, in his adult memory, he couldn’t help but focus on the well endowed chest his mother had sculpted. Oh how hungry he was! What he would have now given to nibble at that pale pink frosting. A powerful man was overcome that day by the curvy mistress of cake.

As we all know, men are wispy, flakey sea captains, destined to be ruled by the tides of their metabolism on the good ship SS blood-sugar. Ahar, after a solid meal there’s wind in the sails and a clear sky ahead – anything’s possible – the stomach juices rise and fall with wistful abandon, a man stands tall – proud – he is a man of activity! Of fair spirit! Of salty confidence. However, on the horizon lurks the pirates of hunger, smudging up the sun and leading his manships astray to shallow, barren shores. Once emptied of his lunchy riches, the revered boy admiral is driven to madness, ordering his most cherished crew to walk the plank, before flailing about in a vacuous rage of astronomical self-pity.

Now, is to say that men fall apart when they haven’t eaten fair, or is it more accurate to suggest that ‘everyone’ falls apart? Asking around, I note that it is generally regarded as a man thing to get clinically cranky when famished. Perhaps this has less to do with genetics and reflects more on sir’s general inability to deftly process untoward emotions. Perhaps the action of a man saying: ‘I really need to eat now or I’m going to lose my freaking melon,’ is his way of saying: ‘I am vulnerable, uncomfortable and I need to remind you at this time that I require care, despite my rugged exterior and appreciation of Transformers.’

In one of my recent groundbreaking studies, I took all the Justin Heazlewood’s in Melbourne and conducted a simple experiment. I sent them on two dates, one, with a gorgeous record store girl with a great sense of humour who’s signature dish was ‘savlova’ (a meat based dessert). The other was with a plain, real estate secretary who served up a casual menu of pumpkin soup, roast lamb with all the trimmings, followed by apple crumble and ice cream.

I found the results startling. The subject, while clearly having a better time with the indie girl, called the date short, and left soon after dinner. And while conversation was stagnant with the secretary, Justin stayed the night! Sure, the secretary was his flat mate and the indie girl asked him to leave after a lewd incident, but I think the results are obvious.

To suggest that menfolk, as complex and sensitive as we are, can be wooed by pie is utterly offensive and possibly true. We are driven by earthy passion and daring intellect, and the way to our hearts is through love, understanding, and a special kind of food you can’t buy at the supermarket. As Ernie Monbulk said, ‘the way to a man’s brain is through his innuendo.’

This article was originally published in Frankie Magazine #20.

Regardless of your geographic tendency or sociological demographic, by the time you hit early adulthood, you will have had the misfortune of spending a Friday night at ‘The Cliché.’ The Cliché is a chain of nightclubs around Australia that use the same dingy decor and audio aftershave from DJ Lobotomy to attract a specific clientele. A Starbucks for sleazes.

Breath on nose. Hands through hair. Eyes on boobs. Foot in mouth. For honest, underground kids, the reality of the pub sleaze is a distant memory that no indie safehouse could ever rekindle. Or could it? Perhaps there’s a force at play more brazen and corrupt than any Dazza in a singlet, and who could inflict more emotional damage than Spiro the legal exec ever could. Let me introduce the concept of the Indie sleaze. A story that no Frankie reader should miss.

A few years ago, I happily did my head in about the paradox of approaching girls in bars. I felt like some social Archimedes sitting in the bath of my own self-loathing. If I start talking to a girl, won’t it be bleedingly obvious that I’m attracted to her and she’ll think I’m cracking onto her and hate me? You reeker! I exclaimed. Thus I did nothing but carefully implode on myself and grew so confident about the severity of my neuroses that I deemed them entertaining enough to express on stage. My mumbling, bumbling, fumbling stage act grew vaguely popular, to the point where I found myself in a verifiable position to speak to ladyfolk. To be honest, after a few years of hit and miss gigs and doing some serious ‘work’ on myself, I’d grown to be, oh and it pains me to say this, kind of confident. This did not fit in with my high school idea of myself or my stage persona at all. Frankly, it was becoming a real downer.

After speaking to these arty, bohemian girls, wrapped in grandmother’s wallpaper, eyes like manga moons through Venetian fringe, I detected a fragility that would be alienated by any bravado or showmanship. Despite the emotional rush of the after show, I had to ensure that I was no Pepe Le Pew to their…ah…the cat…that Pepe Le Pew chases around. So, drawing inspiration from another cartoon character, I modelled myself on Eeyore. With eyes and voice lowered, I found it wasn’t hard to draw from the well of low self-esteem that was constantly bubbling beneath me like the rivers of slime in Ghostbusters Two. I didn’t feel manipulative at all, if anything, I was being acutely honest, and taking an opportunity to offload my past tales of loneliness and frustration to someone pretty who seemed interested. Rather than pour on the charm and one liners, I’d pour on the insecurities and monologues. And with pink ribbon tied to my listless donkey tail, I was dubbed ‘the indie sleaze.’ A softie with a hard on. Where was the sex in the city episode about this?

The title was given to me by a girl who I met for debrief drinks a few months after a one night stand. Her complaint was that I’d been far too nice and sensitive and expressive and emotional for a fling, and that she’d assumed from my behaviour that it meant something more. “You’re the worst kind of sleaze,” she’d said. “At least with dodgy guys you know it’s just about sex.” By removing myself from the disaster men of ‘The Cliché’ I had managed to create a mutant hybrid of their behaviour which hurt girls even more. Whereas they’d be trying to feel her breasts, I’d be trying to feel her childhood. When they’d been breaking out of the house, I’d been breaking eggs for breakfast.

Thus, I became so paranoid at being known as a sleaze that I lost all my confidence, and went back to good old fashioned sitting in the corner at 2am staring at girls out the sides of my glasses. I was miserable, and genuinely felt like I needed saving. Now, that’s when the offers really flooded in.

I started my love affair with op shops back in Grade 12, when I sprinted into our local St Vinnies to hide from some bullies. It was exactly like the scene in The NeverEnding Story, except that instead of a certain hardcover storybook altering my destiny, it was a burnt orange cardigan. The kingdom of my fashion was crumbling – after years of honouring surf and basketball brands, I felt the ‘nothing’ of realisation that I didn’t actually surf or play ball sports. As I buttoned up the cable-stitch wool blend of the home-knitted cardi, an aesthetic warmth flowed through my bones – finally, clothing that endorsed my real idols, Beck and John Lennon, and reflected my sensitive ‘raised by grandparents’ nature. I was home.

Ask anyone who was there, in the late nineties; the op shopping scene along the north-west coast of Tasmania was electric. We’re talking a strip of five small towns, four shops apiece, all brimming with Art Deco collectables fuelled by an army of fashionable seniors who 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 ka-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 swatch book of nineties vomit, the payoff of snaring a prized coat hanger of style was incomparable. The op shop held out its arms and wrapped me in a past more friendly and classy than my present, and spun me a rewards card of wholesome promise.

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.’ And now reports were flooding in about attacks on op shops back home. Tales of sharp-tongued fashionistas marching in, assaulting mannequins and bargaining down the price with such ferocity that retail biddies had to hide in the staff room for emergency morning tea. Rumour had it that garments were then being siphoned to big-city boutiques and given triple figure price tags. As incidents of metro-retro ram raids continued to swell, I kept my head and fingers down, landing myself the odd suit or Peter Russell-Clarke cookbook.

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 seventies 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.

Our retro obsession has pushed vintage into the mainstream, putting an enormous strain on an industry that hasn’t produced anything since the late seventies. For now, op shopping in the city is dead, but there are still secret bargain ‘breaks’ out in the country. These little stores must now fight against a problem greater than any price rise – the nineties plague.

This article was originally published in Frankie Magazine #18. It was also published in The Sex Mook (Vignette Press 2007).

One Night Stands – the methadone clinics for intimacy junkies. For many, this grope on a rope mentality is too depraved to consider. It conjures up conjugal imagery of a greasy footballer and a Midori soaked netball specialist in a soft porn yawn. For us fragile art-folk, it’s either long term relationships or thoughtful glances followed by conversations about bands, a kiss on the cheek and a cryptic Myspace message if you’re lucky. Right?

That was my assumption as I found myself dumped in the bacteria filled wading pool of singledom, at the end of a seven year waterslide of serial monogamy. Ah, the twists and turns of arousingly routine mixtapes, movies, and massages. I had somehow managed to slide from one relationship to the next, always knowing where my next emotional meal was coming from, but now my heart was homeless. I was standing in Speedos on the icy deck of the singles scene – haunted by Catholic guilt, exposed, neurotic, broke, depressed and desperately horny. I was going to fit right in.

I had a faint idea how to survive in the single world. Piecing together my memories of movies and books, I realised that at some point I would most likely have to talk to a girl. Finding this too far-fetched, I discovered a communication loophole when I began to frequent an open-mic poetry night. Little did I realise but like most art scenes, the gig was just a shopfront for an in-house debauch-fest of idiosyncratic mess-ups. As a performer, material became ‘ice-breaker spam’ for the introflirted audience. These nights provided an anaesthetised entry into the neon cauldron of the uncommitted, as I honed the use of my ‘Greydar’ to find girls as lonely as me.

What initially perplexed me about the ‘Twelve Hour Delve’ was the way I’d turn into Disclaimer Boy. The lovechild of Hugh Grant and Woody Allen, Disclaimer Boy’s trademark move was rescuing the situation through a devastating combination of apologies and explanations. “I don’t normally do this kind of thing.” (CRASH!). “I don’t want to give you the wrong impression.” (KAPOW!).“ “I can’t handle a relationship at the moment.” (WHAP!). Disclaimer boy would often find that by saying he wasn’t serious about the situation, he gave the situation a graven gravity. It was also revealed to him by his arch-nemeses ‘Clarity Girl’ that he probably would have a relationship if he found the right person, and that he was really saying ‘It’s you I don’t want a relationship with, you indie slapper.’ (OUCH!)

As a One Night Stand, the sex bit itself was always characteristically wayward, amateur and blurry – something like the storyboards to an adult film made at TAFE. The amount of alcohol consumed pickles the diorama of semi-conscious fantasy into some bizarre primal screensaver mode. As the mouse of morning stirs, the gummy window of your mind maximises, followed by the familiar catchcry of ‘Nude, where’s my clothes?’ You are then faced with the anti-romance of the post-apocalyptic Achilles heel – the One Morning Sit.

Many people successfully avoid their breakfast of regret flakes by nicking off in the early hours. I could never do this, due to my other superhero Ex-Christian Sense Of Guilt Nice-Guy Man. This often led to some truly awkward half-hugs in the kitchen, followed by the mutual appearance of urgent things to do. I am utterly fascinated by the paradox that sharing your entire body with a stranger is okay, while in the morning the concept of holding hands is far too intimate and fingertips turn to snails.

They say sex is never devoid of emotion, I would agree, but add that most bars offer a great range of heart tranquilisers. For years I decided that I was too sensitive and romantic to do the One Night Stand thing, but if necessity is the mother of invention then I could take out the grand final on The New Inventors with the complex justification program I’ve come up with. The truth is, it’s not for everyone but, as the comic says: Is it a laugh? Is it a cry? No…yes…maybe? It’s Captain Experiment! Figures sold desperately.

This article was originally published in Frankie Magazine #18

A reliable source (girl in pub) once told me that Astro Boy was originally set in 1995. Whether or not it’s true, it does reinstall the notion that we probably have a right to feel ripped off by the ‘future.’ Twelve years on from that fictional target, and I see no flying cars (Barina’s with wings never took off, didn’t they learn anything from skateboards?) and we’re no closer to living on mars, although I’d like to forward the conspiracy theory that the governments are trying to slowly turn Earth into Mars in a hope to better understand its atmosphere. The 80’s TV show ‘Beyond 2000’ planted the seeds of a hyper-advanced proto-world complete with robots performing an operation (the board game, sure, but they didn’t buzz once), a clothesline that activated a rooftop when it rained, and Virtual Reality everything. (Frogger 2000 man…you ARE the frog). I don’t remember the episode where coal is still our miracle mineral, the world’s population is set to double, and that NASA will call off all space shuttle expeditions due to the issue of foam peeling off the fuel tank. C’mon, are they a work for the dole participant now?

The World’s Fucked. Officially. Apparently. It’s the subliminal catch-cry of the Now generation. We all hear about it, we all kind of know it, but we try not to think about it. Sometimes, we talk about it – mainly at parties at 3am, just before the guitar comes out and everyone asks what the taxi number is. I’ve honed the conversation down to a micro-art – “Yeah, global warming, terrorism…hmmm.” Then I allow for three seconds of pensive face and side-eyes before swigging some home brew and rating the new Josh Pyke album. Does that make me superficially delusional, or pragmatically optimistic? I like to think I’m better than the self-absorbed trendy-tragics yuppying away on public transport – yet I can’t mine the passion to relate to members of Greenpower charities. Am I doing enough to save the earth? Am I the self-absorbed twat? I realise there’s a force in play much more crippling than Al-quaida, climate change or the I.R. reforms of a right wing government – guilt! Lower-middle class guilt. Ow! It burns. The goggles do nothing.

When September 11 happened I was out on my Uncle’s property in Michaelago, NSW, squeezing out my major writing project for Uni, a comedic play about the music industry. For the week previous I’d never been so intensely embroiled in my own art and ideas – one overcast morning I heard the dramatic static of voices on the radio, and spent the rest of the day glued to the worry membrane of the outside world. My play now seemed comical for the wrong reasons, how hilarious that I should sit writing quietly under the delusion that it had any significance at all, when on the other side of the planet terrorists were branding history with a flaming insignia of fear. I finished the play, but since then I barely read the paper or get embroiled in political discussions. My emotional intelligence finds it too bleak, and decides that it is better spent writing, gigging and loving my friends and family. If only that was enough for Centrelink.

The truth is, I do feel powerless to change anything significantly. If my ‘leader’ who I didn’t vote for can’t even sign the Kyoto agreement, then how much power can I gain from buying Safe toilet paper and The Big Issue? Plenty. Life is a daily perspective festival – my protest comes from a determination that I refuse to have my spirit watered down by the hangover of mankind’s thousand year drunken rampage. I refuse to adopt the defeatist attitude of pub dregs, dribbling through another pint going ‘what’s it fuckin’ matter, it’s all gonna end.’ I ride through the muck with a shield of quiet concern, a sword of wit and creativity on a very wonky horse of metaphors.

My main worry is Beck. He’s gone from ‘Two turntables and a microphone’ to ‘It’s getting darker. We dance alone this way.’ When Beck’s depressed, then something really is wrong.