Datsun Sunny: Not the Manliest Car Name Ever

by Jeb on June 17, 2009

We haven’t owned a car for the last 10 years. My preferred illusion is that we’re environmentally conscious, when the quiet reality is that my last experience owning a car was like being married to Pete Doherty.

Sure, sometimes it’d start if it was feeling perky. Other times it’d lie drooling in my driveway in an engine-flooded coma. Its habit of randomly conking out while I was on the highway also made life just a little too exciting.

Did I mention it was a Datsun Sunny? Because it was, and there’s limited methods of revealing that’s the brand of your car to your mates without resorting to a Mr. Humphries impersonation.

After Adam and I moved into inner Sydney, it was almost pointless owning a car, so we got rid of it, and haven’t really driven a car since – but lately we’ve decided we’d like to get around a little more on the weekends. That, and I’ve bloody well saved up enough carbon credits over the last 10 years by not driving, so I intend to pollute the roads as irresponsibly as possible.

Last week I concluded it’d be a wise idea to book a refresher driving lesson – just to make sure I’ve still got a grip on moving a vehicle around. Alarm bells went off when the fellow at the driving school who answered the phone sounded like the squeaky-voiced teenage Simpsons character pictured to the left – but we’re keen to get a car, so I booked him in. He was the first guy that was available.

Sometimes you should trust your instincts. The first sign of trouble began when he rang to advise he’d be around 25 minutes late due to traffic. Perhaps bad judgement on my part for booking a lesson at 5:30 PM, but surely he’d have the experience to recognise this could be a problem?

Thus began my driving lesson with someone more highly strung than Jack Johnson’s twee acoustic guitar. He seemed constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown, despite the bumper-to-bumper traffic we were plodding our way through slowly. Still, at least I got the experience in – I’m planning on test driving a car to buy tomorrow, so we’ll see how I go.

One important thing I realised during my driving lesson – pedestrians are bloody unsafe beings! I’m equally guilty of it myself, but I’d forgotten how freaking unpredictable and dangerous stepping out in front of a car can be. Especially when it’s me behind the wheel, you targets-in-waiting.

I’m sure there’s a few other things I’ve forgotten since I was last driving regularly, too. Bloody hell, I haven’t even used a petrol pump in years, and I’ll have no trouble building up my anxiety about that one to a point where I’m recreating the petrol station scene from Zoolander purely by accident.

Wish me luck.

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List of People Who Should Always be Followed Around in Public by Someone Playing the Benny Hill Theme on a Loudspeaker

by Jeb on June 16, 2009

  • Mark Latham
  • The Queen
  • Andrew Bolt
  • Gretel Killeen, whenever accompanied by a toy boy
  • Sam Newman (with pauses in the music whenever he opens his mouth)
  • Anyone who appears in a Zoot Review
  • Danni Minogue, whenever confronted with cameras
  • Any metal singer, whenever they tap or punch their own chest
  • Todd McKenney
  • Anyone working in a clothing store in a fashionable part of town, attempting to combine ironic facial hair with a cardigan
  • Ian Turpie (c’mon, this actually would be awesome)
  • P. Diddy
  • Billy Corgan (homeboy may actually crack a smile)
  • Ben Cousins, but only if he’s erratically swatting at the air around him, trying to kill the music

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Why I Suspect ATM Actually Stands for Artistic Taste Moderator

by Jeb on June 15, 2009

Despite my childhood fear of the Village logo as mentioned in my last post, Adam and I overcame adversity and saw The Hangover at our local Village cinema this weekend.

Buying cinema tickets online has always seemed like a no-brainer to me, mostly because you can choose your own seat when the cinema has allocated seating. Certain human behaviours have always irritated me in cinema audiences, so if I can select my designated seat away from most of the other booked seats, all the better.

Probably the worst culprit: the tittering group of friends who parrot every punchline on the screen, then descend into a second round of laughter at their own repetition of a joke everyone else has finished laughing at.

Then there’s the hassle of being caught next to someone with Cinema Bladder, and enduring an exercise in calisthenics every time they need to dash to the bathroom.

So it suits me fine to purchase my tickets online. When you arrive at the cinema, you can either pick up the tickets from the box office or from one of the cinema’s ATM machines.

When we visited this weekend, we decided to quickly grab our pre-booked tickets from the ATM machine. When I swiped my credit card, not only did the machine print the tickets for our session, but it also printed tickets for every booking I’d ever made over the last three years. On and on it went, barfing out reminders of my ill-advised cinematic visits over the past few years.

After this concluded, the ATM shuddered to a stop, then abruptly displayed an “Out of Service” message. It actually felt like a judgement on my taste in movies, if I’m honest. Rather depressing when even machines crumple in shame at your taste in entertainment…

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These 12 Seconds of Film Tormented My Childhood

by Jeb on June 2, 2009

Writing about IMAX yesterday reminded me of one of my biggest childhood fears. It wasn’t the dark, it wasn’t monsters, it was… Village Roadshow’s ominous, creepy cinema logo from the 1980s. Just hearing the opening sound effect -- which I imagined to be the noise of an undead rapist grinding a steak knife against the skull of an orphan -- was enough to start me screaming as a child.

It’s the first logo on this video:

Ever have one of those lucid memories as a child that you carry through to adulthood? Every time I was forced to sit through that creepy sequence, certain that it was the soundtrack to my imminent death, I clearly remember thinking “How can they show this to CHILDREN??!“

In my mind, the logo now appears unintentionally comedic. Why advertise the glory of your film studio with something that sounds like music for pall-bearers to solemnly march to in 2080?

That construction of bad animation and creepy synths always sent me absolutely batshit with fear. At the 8 second mark where the “Village Roadshow Corporation” is shot into the screen with weapons constructed by robotic overloads from a dystopian future opening up a portal to hell -- that’s the point where I was never able to hold myself together.

Usually I had to flee away from the screen, cowering behind a seat for fear of whatever was about to sacrifice my fragile mortality and splice apart my sanity. The closing synth strains always sounded like nothing other than an off-hand apology from a cyborg that was only doing the job it was programmed for, right before it tore my face apart with lasers.

Got any ads that gave you the creeps as a child? The “bowling for AIDS” ad doesn’t count, we were all collectively petrified by that.

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IMAXimum Disappointment

by Jeb on June 1, 2009

In recent months, Hoyts cinemas have been retrofitting selected cinemas into what they’re advertising as large-scale IMAX cinemas. Around the time Watchmen was released, my mates and I figured those famous blue appendage scenes would be best propelled into our faces via IMAX, so off we drove.

We were expecting a cinema screen of the precise gargantuan format you’d regularly expect from an IMAX screen. Instead, by my reckoning, Hoyts’ interpretation of an IMAX screen was only 25% of the normal IMAX size you’d expect. It was a bit larger than your average cinema screen, but certainly didn’t have the IMAX wow factor you’d expect for a $25 ticket.

The experience left us rather jaded – we’d been charged the equivalent of a Gold Class ticket price, plus we’d driven out to Highpoint to visit the special IMAX screens. I used to live near Highpoint when I was at university, so I feel qualified to promote the local nickname of “Knifepoint” as an appropriate summary of the area. Had we visited a regular cinema in the city, we could’ve strolled out to enjoy the nightlife afterwards. Instead, we had our wallets scraped out by IMAX’s new policy of whoring out their brand name willy-nilly, then driving home through suburbs which appeared to be based on a Grand Theft Auto expansion pack.

When I returned home, I discovered IMAX are licencing out their name to these comparitively smaller screens around the world. It seemed only fair to let Hoyts have their say, so I emailed them with my complaint. Their response didn’t completely address my concerns – just threw a lot of “IMAX is awesome!” facts at me – but the crux of their message was:

“Although screen size is an important component it is more about the screen geometry, aspect ratio and the enhanced viewing angles that provide every patron with the same experience regardless of seating position.”

On this basis, I’m stacking some milk crates on top of each other in a semi-circle 20 centimetres away from my TV screen, rebranding the experience as IMAX and charging my mates $25 to enter my living room.

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Top 9 Lessons Learnt from Australia’s Terrible TV Game Shows of the Past

by Jeb on May 27, 2009

There are many lessons to be learnt from our nation’s blunderings through TV game shows. For every Sale of the Century and It’s a Knockout, there’s still fecal dregs like Keynotes and The Up Late Game Show With Hotdogs lurking under the televisual toilet bowl rim.

So, onwards! Let our future game show concepts learn from the many mistakes we’ve made from the past, as I count down 9 lessons from Australian game shows of the past, who’ve pinned us down and wetly farted on our faces via the medium of television.

Lesson #9: If One of your Team Captains is a Puppet, This Spells Trouble

The Main Event was a celebrity panel game show, which appeared to take place in an alien spaceship where Larry Emdur was irrationally deciding which trifecta of Channel 7 personalities would become his serving galactic lords into the future. Playing on behalf of a set of home viewers who always appeared confused as to how they ended up on the show in the first place, one of the regular team captains was a children’s TV puppet named Agro. Which says a lot, frankly.

Lesson #8: Don’t Let Kerri-Anne Kennerley Out of your Sight or She’ll Start Hosting Game Shows, THEN WE’LL ALL PAY THE PRICE

Kerri-Anne is in her element restraining drug-addled celebrities and dancing with politicians on morning TV. Where she absolutely isn’t in her element is cackling her sinister laugh and flashing her harbinger-of-doom eyes around, fronting game shows. The nation was unlucky enough to experience a string of Channel 10 Kerri-Anne game shows (Greed, Moment of Truth, Who is Willing to Permit Kerri-Anne to Inhale Their Soul in Exchange for Homewares?) until we all drank ourselves to sleep to forget it ever happened.

Lesson #7: Anything You’d Normally Play While You’re Pissed at the RSL Probably Won’t Work as a Game Show

This is one of the more recent lessons, but what did we actually learn from National Bingo Night? That we’re happy to annihilate entire forests by printing an endless stream of auto-generated bingo cards from Channel 7′s website for almost no purpose? That we’ll gladly sit agape in front of the idiot tube inhaling Doritos, while a ridiculously over-sized bingo machine evacuates its bowels, and the drawn numbers are screamed out in a manner that suggests an army of T-1000 model Terminators are marching down the corridor towards the studio? Or did we instead learn that Tim Campbell looks like he’s on the brink of physically exploding if he’s restrained from belting out a song-and-dance number for more than an hour at a time?

No, we just learnt that pub games don’t usually work as a game show. Unless you’re talking about a nation of stoned uni students staring at someone playing a large-scale pokies machine on their behalf, in which case Deal or No Deal seems to be doing quite well for itself.

Lesson #6: If Your Host is a Prat, Don’t Expect Anything to Change When They Begin Hosting a Game Show

All I need to say here is that if you were unlucky enough to endure Vince Sorrenti hosting Let’s Make a Deal, I’ll personally craft you a war medal.

Lesson #5: When Your Prize Models Are Required to Wear Cowboy Costumes, Something’s Gone Wrong

Larry Emdur’s quickly-forgotten wild-west themed game show (you read that correctly) Cash Bonanza appeared to be the result of a retired Movie World stage set quickly recycled into a cheap game show opportunity. The entire experience was quite bizarre -- although the set was Wild West-themed, the audience was split into colour-coded red/blue/yellow stripes. Kinda felt like the United Colours of Benetton were having a right-wing hate rally against rising wheat prices in the Wild West. The games were more painfully crude and random than your younger brother drinking Strongbow Sweet for the first time -- in fact, the over-enthusiastic audience seemed to have been plied with that very beverage.

On the plus side, if Larry Emdur grinning at you toothily while striding around in a pair of chaps is the only thing that gets you off, you were in luck.

Lesson #4: Travel-Themed Reality Game Shows Aren’t Permissible When They Don’t Venture Outside a Single Australian State

Radio’s Matt Tilley seems to suffer from Dannii Minogue syndrome, in that he’s relentlessly pushing against the membrane of mainstream success, but managing to piece through all the wrong places. An extremely forgettable gameshow experience of his was titled The Great Chase. In what seemed to originally take a leaf from The Amazing Race’s book, the show largely took place with four families aimlessly driving around their cars in the back streets of New South Wales’ most skull-numbingly boring towns, apparently searching for pieces of a map to find… oh, I don’t know. I’ve long forgotten the prize on offer, but from what I remember, they’d be hoping it was euthanasia. Memorable for Matt Tilley acting as some evil doctor barking out clues from his evil lair via mobile phone, which didn’t quite work (when was the last time something exciting happened in Echuca?)

Lesson #3: It’s Only Enjoyable to Watch Pricks Yelling at Each Other if There’s Some Redeeming Factor Involved

There’s always a nasty streak in today’s reality game shows, but usually something to bring the mood back up at the end. Even The Weakest Link at least offered a sizable prize after the nauseating verbal scraps which the show became famous for.

But it was Red Symon’s incredibly mean-streaked game show Shafted which got the entire ordeal so wrong. Populated by a nightly bunch of contestants who seemed to have been phone-voted in by their local communities as the resident most deserving to be deliberately set on fire in public, it was downright disheartening to watch. In most cases, the contestants were such dicks to each other in the final round that they both triggered a game rule which meant neither of them won any money. There was not one pleasant thing about the damn show, which is probably why it was cancelled so quickly. The entire experience felt like a high-art game show interpretation of US foreign policy with a sneering, disgusted Red Symons lording over the entire experience like an octopus choking your subconscious into irretrievable depths of misery. I’d rather live as a resident of Kyle Sandilands’ colon than see this return to the screen any time soon.

Lesson #2: Don’t Let Your Show’s Prize Be Won at the Expense of Total Privacy

In the 90s, a short-lived game show hosted by Rob Elliot (later host of Wheel of Fortune) by the name of Talking Telephone Numbers flapped its way on-screen. The basic premise of the show involved a number of in-studio ker-razy games played by celebrities, each of which would result in a number from 0-9 being selected as the outcome. After six games, if your phone number contained all six digits, you were able to phone into the studio to claim a prize. In the pre-internet days of interactive television, you’d have thought this would have blown the country’s psyche off like a dislodged wig after a particularly farty curry -- but it didn’t actually last many episodes.

Quite a simple concept, and it was inoffensive enough. What causes this program to stick in my mind is that when each contestant phoned through, they were introduced by full name and suburb of residence. In the days of six-number telephone numbers in Australia, this made it pretty goddamn easy to track down a winner via the phone book knowing someone’s surname. Just wait a few weeks until the lucky winner had begin inevitably stocking their home with brand new consumer electronics, then go nuts with a crowbar and a balaclava.

Actually, in the age of everyone worrying about privacy, this sounds like exactly the kind of game show we’re about to see: how much of your privacy are you willing to sacrifice in order to win a cash prize? Kind of like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, but with genital exposure instead of puzzling geography at the top prize tier.

Lesson #1: Never, Never, Never Adapt a Children’s Game Show for Adult Consumption

It’s so quick to forget that Larry Emdur’s debut appearance on our TV screens was a prime-time version of the kids’ game show Double Dare, threateningly titled Family Double Dare. Quite how Channel 10 ever figured that sliming adults during Physical Challenges and having them desperately clamber through an obstacle course largely compromised of balloons and shaving cream seemed like ratings gold is unknown, but it only ever lasted three episodes.

As much as I wish I had YouTube footage of this particular game show, I don’t -- so I’ll reward you with Larry Emdur having a rap battle with Vanilla Ice, which is equally as painful.

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If You’re a Journalist Suffering ADHD, I’ve Got a Magazine Who Wants to Employ You

by Jeb on May 25, 2009

For many years now, I’ve subscribed to Kerrang! magazine. If you’re unfamiliar with the subject matter, it was recently described as “the metal equivalent of a teenage gossip magazine” by the host of my favourite music podcast. He’s bang on the money.

There’s been a few things that’ve started bugging me about the magazine in recent times. Perhaps it’s the fact that the editorial focus oscilates wildly between dissecting the nuances of black metal and identifying which emo singers have a new haircut each week. More likely is the fact that it’s starting to remind me of reading Smash Hits at age 14 and running down to Brashs to buy a cassingle.

This afternoon I began the process of renewing my subscription, only to discover the cost has doubled. There is no bloody way I’m paying over AU$500 when I can’t even remember why I subscribed in the first place – maybe it was for the interviews? Even boisterously yelling “KERR-RANGGGG!” when the mag arrives in my mailbox has lost its appeal.

But if it’s serious interviews I’m after, I’m not sure why I’m still reading the fucking thing. After flicking through the last few issues, the following are all Kerrang! interview questions that high profile bands were recently asked, without any context whatsoever:

  • Do you believe in life on other planets?
  • Is there one hair product you can’t live without?
  • Have you ever been caught in a genuine fist fight?
  • Are you much of a handyman around the house?

For Hetfield’s sake, this is a supposed heavy music magazine, not a Facebook quiz! “Are you much of a fucking handyman around the house”?! I’d love to see Andrew Denton adapt this scattered approach if Enough Rope ever makes it back on air. Who cares about delving into the mechanics of what makes high-profile personalities tick, when we can find out what their favourite Subway sandwich is and who they’d most like to be from Toy Story? (Then again, Sunrise seems to be doing a pretty bang-on job of this anyway).

Goodbye, Kerrang!. My subscription won’t be renewed, but I look forward to you interviewing me when my metalhomo band goes platinum, so we can analyse my favourite pancake topping.

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How to Confuse Drunk Viewers of Sports TV into Gambling Their Money Away

by Jeb on May 19, 2009

After a recent poker night in which I inexplicably did pretty well, I’ve been watching a little televised poker. As far as I can tell, One HD doesn’t have much else to broadcast yet, besides foreign cricket matches and Slamball.

What particularly struck me on this show was seeing an advertisement for a new poker tournament TV series being filmed locally, and inviting anyone to apply. “Any player level welcome – beginner to expert!” the telly trumpeted. As you can imagine, I applied immediately. The only problem was that I was incredibly drunk at the time, so now I’m terrified I may have signed some sort of contract online requiring me to take part whether I like it or not. Considering I’m the kind of newbie to the game who still has to ask “does a flush beat a straight? What about if I have a Draw Four card?” and the like, it doesn’t bode well.

The most prominent advertiser on One HD during these poker shows is a company called PokerStars. If you’re into online gambling, you’ve no doubt heard of them – they’re one of the biggest online poker sites around. My assumption is that their executive board meetings consist mostly of them laughing ominously and endlessly, while conducting mass orgies on top of an endless flood of cash being pumped into the room from a Pacific island with hilariously lax financial laws. What causes their TV advertisement to transcend into farce is the unbelievable message they flash on-screen at the ad’s conclusion:

“PokerStars.net is not a gambling website.”

Now, if you visit PokerStars.net within Australia, this genuinely appears to be the case: you’re presented with a “Oh, we’re all clean, this is all for fun, no money involved!” type website, as you’d expect – how else would they be able to advertise within Australia? Perhaps they really are an above-board corporation and are simply funneling thousands of dollars into providing free for-fun poker online out of their goodness of their heart.

OR NOT! But this is where the genius lies. If you’re drunk, like most of One HD’s viewers probably are, you probably failed to notice they were advertising pokerstars.net rather than pokerstars.com. Therein lies what I’m sure is a gigantic loophole. Although PokerStars.net only ever mentions playing poker for free with no cash involved, PokerStars.com features all sorts of advertising noise about paid online poker.

Maybe you were clever enough to remember the correct website, and visited PokerStars.net anyway. Although they’re correct in stating that “PokerStars.net is not a gambling website”, you’ll find that once you download the client software from the noticed gambling-free website, the software itself is certainly capable of hoovering up your disposable income.

Anyway, I don’t have to worry about all these advertising technicalities – I’m just living in dread that One HD are going to phone me up and demand I audition for their new poker tournament show, probably out of my own pocket. The best I can hope for is that I’m playing against a guy named Ben whose car numberplate also starts with “BEN” – surely a dude like that’s already used up his entire allotment of luck in life?

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There’s a Bloody Good Reason Why CDs were Limited to 74 Minutes in Length

by Jeb on May 16, 2009

cdNow that MP3 downloads are about to supersede CDs completely, there’s an unexpected threat on the horizon. To date, artists have been forced to limit their albums to 74 minutes or less, to fit within the maximum length of a CD.

Albums in MP3 format terrifyingly remove this time restriction. Did you think the recent resurgence of prog rock albums were lengthy enough already? Prepare to have your perceptions of space and time torn open like James Matheson’s mouth!

Trent Reznor’s already hinting at his desires for lengthier formats by releasing Ghosts I-IV as a four disc set. The album concept was based around the final four hours of a box of industrial kitchen knives being kicked around a wretched dystopian wasteland by a bunch of android soccer players, I believe. But no matter what the concept was, it’s clear that he’s secretly aggrieved. You can just tell he wanted to force us to listen to those albums for fifteen hours longer than he was able to.

On the plus side, without a 74-minute limitation; Ministry of Sound compilations could finally provide a dance mix to accommodate the entire six hour length of your manic, sweaty, flail-dancing acid trips. Prog metal albums will progress to day-long odysseys, but will continue to be comprised of six tracks or less.

One thing’s for sure, the Presets sure won’t have any problems filling up a three hour album: they’ll be certain to stick to their formula of repeating a key phrase relentlessly (“I’m here with all of my people!” “Are you the one?” “This boy’s in love!” x 5000), in the vocal style of a disgruntled Nick Cave discovering he’s purchased an unsavoury sandwich.

The Presets actually inspired a possible business idea for me. Since I first saw Moan My IP.com (NSFW) – a site where needy girls moan your IP address in a worrying manner – I figured the Presets must be successful for a reason. Surely there’s also room for The Singer of the Presets Monotonously Repeats Your IP Address.com?

In fact, I’m sure there’s a few other related website ideas that have the potential for success:

  • That Depressing-Sounding Dude from Interpol Injects Heroin and Moans Your IP Address in the Style of a Dirge Song.com
  • Gina G Over-Attempts a Pop Comeback By Perkily Shrieking Your IP Address.com
  • Aphex Twin Transmit Your IP Address by Dropping Ball Bearings in Morse Code Format onto a Microphone.com
  • Daniel Johns Wistfully Penetrates a Trombone and Wails Your IP Address in Falsetto as he Climaxes.com

There’s money in those ideas, surely?

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Australia’s Next Top Lesbian, Mortal Kleaning, and Other Unrealised Game Ideas

by Jeb on May 14, 2009

What ho! This past week I’ve had a visiting interstate friend to entertain. My buddy was a fine house guest, and even spent the better part of 30 minutes running after a rogue mouse we’ve been trying to entrap for weeks. Any boarder who arrives with rodent eradication skills is welcome in Chez Jeb!

Any mate of ours who crashes in our spare bed seems to be obsessed with the enchanted softness of our mattress. The thing is, it’s a cheap-ass nasty Ikea mattress – the most inexpensive one they sold at the time. It’s probably constructed from at least fourteen Chinese children’s souls, but everyone claims they drift off to sleep immediately because it’s the most comfortable thing to sleep on in the world. This could be an ongoing condition of my ladyconfusion, but I’d always figured a heaving pile of breasts would be the most comfortable thing possible to sleep on. If there was such a mattress molded in this concept – say, the Sealy Breastopedic – I’d be replacing my existing mattress stat.

This week I’ve also been joking with my best mate about the ridiculous things which can set off anxiety in us. Since my childhood, I’ve been terrified by the phone ringing (you can imagine what a rip-snorter this was during my call centre years). My gut automatically assumes the worst case scenario before I answer the call. Caller ID has helped me get over it, but when I get an “unknown caller”… I’m always a little hesitant to answer. Even worse is when I let the call drift to voicemail, then I’m forced to make the gut-wrenching call to discover what I’m convinced will be awful news (but is usually just something like our real estate whinging that they want to organise an inspection).

That’s why I was so into the idea of Voice2Text. Your callers leave a voicemail, it’s converted into a SMS, then you receive it! No messy anxiety dialling into my voicemail, it’s there for me to read, BAM. Problem solved.

The problem is that Voice2Text is not quite perfect when it comes to interpreting voices. It does a pretty decent job, but sometimes it’s unintentionally ridiculous. My best mate’s name is Cam, but the service frequently misinterprets his name as “Gam”, amongst other gibberish misspellings when he leaves a message. In the world of Gays™, “GAM” usually interprets to Gay Asian Male… which Cam isn’t, as far as I’m aware. But alongside the other misspellings and acronyms whenever he leaves me voicemail, the resulting SMS usually sounds like a horny Asian guy has left me a message, ready for sweaty manlove involving sexual practices I’ve yet to grapple.

At least my voicemail-based anxiety was eventually rewarded with hilarious SMS. See, there’s a good outcome to everything! I’m sure there’s room for a mental health-based version of The Biggest Loser out there (I’m going to regret writing this, because every time I joke about implausible reality shows on here, they appear a few years later. Stand by – Jules Lund will need a new gig eventually, anyway).

washing-handsIf you’re feeling impatient and can’t wait for a TV-based version of The Biggest Headcase, then prepare for your nipples to crystalise like diamonds! Many months ago I had the misfortune of enduring an episode of Today Tonight. On this particular occasion they were wheeling out the fun ol’ “OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE PEOPLE ARE FREAKS, AREN’T THEY?!” story. They had all the usual black-and-white slow-mo scenes of people washing their hands endlessly (although, to be fair, that’s a fairly permissible response to letting a Today Tonight reporter into your own home).

What piqued my interest was the treatment they were purporting: a computer simulator which plunged OCD victims into a gratingly pixellated world where their trigger fears were catapulted at them relentlessly. It was completely indistinguishable from a bargain bin Super Nintendo game. The psychologists in the story swore black and blue that it all worked perfectly, although I suspect their certifications were on par with, say, one Dr. Mario.

Still, I can’t help but think that could be the next hit arcade machine at Intencity and Timezone. Obsessive Hand Washer IV! Mortal Kleaning! Etc, etc.

Speaking of my mate Cam, it’d be a disservice if I didn’t mention a current life-need of his which has arisen. Throughout his life as a committed homosexualist, he’s never had the pleasure of a lesbian friend. This seems to have become quite the goal for him lately, so given the number of hypothetical gameshows I’ve already mentioned in this post, I’d like to propose Australia’s Next Top Lesbian, connecting Australia’s dykes with the gay dudes who… still can’t quite work out why they need a lesbian mate, but want one anyway.

Given Cam’s vagueness over his actual need for a lesbian, the challenges in Next Top Lesbian will play out in an similarly confusing manner:

  • Design a emoticon which expresses displeasure, but only as a lesbian.
  • Fashion a lesbian flower arrangement using only wrenches and hammers.
  • Compose a perplexingly ambiguous gender-shifting acoustic ballad.
  • Product-placement-heavy pillow fights, featuring Sealy Breastopedic mattresses.

The elimination ceremony will feature… oh, I don’t know, Deborah Hutton symbolically smashing some of her own branded kitchenware on the face of the least popular lesbian of the week. But really, if you’re a lesbian in Melbourne with a similar inexplicable desire to become mates with a 6’8″ dude who will inevitably invert you by your ankles while he’s drunk, go bother him on Twitter!

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