Happy (belated and kind of spooky) New Year

I am so out of blog-practice.
I meant to post this photo after I took it on New Year’s night. It really was a dramatic, foreboding sunset, a massive band of cloud, the crescent moon peeking through, all quite Hollywood sci-fi epic and a fitting way to end the shitstorm that was 2008.

Although for me it wasn't so much The Day the Earth Stood Still as The Day the Earth Shrugged and Grabbed Another Beer.

Wherever they lay their head...

Forgot about this. Someone in my building had left a mattress out in the back lane to be picked up by the council.
It stayed there for a few days and I was glad to see one of the working girls put it to good use:


Where the manchester came from, I have no idea...

Departure delayed

Almost two months have passed since I attended to this thing, which I could attribute to sheer laziness or the fact that very little of note has happened.
I also lost a camera, leaving me bereft of visual accompaniment to my random musings, and I had my internet cut off, which really didn’t help matters.

Anyway, life is much as I left it – punctuated by part-time work laying out pages and wondering when the hell Mick and I can move out of town.
We went to Maitland after Christmas in the hope of securing a rental, a kind of stop-gap until he finds a place to buy. The drive up was, you could say, adrenalising. As soon as we got out of Sydney, there was a severe thunderstorm warning on the radio and for the next two hours this was my view:


Terrifying, but we made it.

As for the home-hunt, it was singularly depressing. There were hardly any houses available and those on offer ranged from weatherboard meth-house (security mesh on every window and door) to a bungalow on the New England Highway ten minutes out of town (it was, however, tantalizingly close to KFC). We didn’t even bother looking inside any of them; a cursory external examination was enough to send us back to the pub/drawing board, where we decided we might have to reconsider our options.

I’m glad I haven’t given formal notice to either my work or landlord that I’ll be leaving at the end of January, as I so naively thought. Lord knows when it'll happen.

Maitland is still top of the list as far as destinations go. We even stumbled what appeared to be a gay enclave – the pokie lounge of the Belmore Hotel. About half a dozen or so younger queens were there half-heartedly divesting themselves of money while chatting away. Come to think of it, it’s a little depressing to think that’s all they have but I guess you work with what you’ve got.
Besides, Bogan Bingo sounds pretty funny:

Taxpayer money at work

This was taken at about 8.30pm on New Year’s Eve, a Sydney City Council streetsweeper on Oxford Street clearing the way for revellers to litter and vomit to their hearts’ content.

'The Nightmare Is Over'

Just got sent this from Blair, my ex in New York, taken out his apartment window:


Congratulations, President Obama. (How cool is that?)

Going south

I’m heading to Canberra tomorrow morning – haven’t been there this year I don’t think. There’s not that much reason to, frankly, but I do feel a bit guilty that Mick spends all that time on a coach to Sydney every fortnight, cute backpackers or no.

Mick’s getting his flat ready to sell so I thought I might at least lift the odd box – nothing too heavy, of course – and provide the occasional piece of advice on paint finishes.

I will also dack him at any given occasion (he doesn’t wear underwear at home).

Anything to precipitate our move away, to be honest. I’ve had enough.
My rent’s just been jacked up by almost 20 per cent and I’m barely getting by as it is.
During an economic meltdown, no less!

Work has been improving at least – a few extra days covered next month’s rent – and I can confidently say I can ‘apple-shift-G’ with confidence.
There’s a lovely new bloke – British, forties, straight – who is struggling with the computer system like I was. I am actually now being asked questions! He’s also been kind enough to give me a lift home a couple of times – a limousine by comparison to public transport. It was the first opportunity we’d had to talk at length; the work atmosphere in general is occupied and/or headphoned, albeit punctuated by the occasional trill of queeny glee (that penetrates anything).

It was a pleasant change and we happily chatted about the day at work, the soulless, distinctly grim nature of the new apartment suburbs springing up in south Sydney that passed us on our way north, global financial debacles and our future dreams.
Then he asked me what else I did…


A Canberra motel.

Real Estate 101

Mick and I went to Maitland about a month ago so he could find a house to buy. We stayed at the Metropolitan Hotel, fab deco pub full of afternoon alcoholics; i.e. no drunken teenagers and few clues to our real relationship; this was eventually unravelled by a soon-to-be-cancer-widow who was blowing her hubbie's money on the pokies. She also took her wig off at one point to illisutrate her owb battles and point out that, whlie we're gay and perhaps inclined to trouble, we ain't seen nothing.
Anyway, our days were spent in Mick's car, having gathered the addresses for potential homes.
Some were dismissed purely on the terms of the feral neighbours we drove past or the general sense of ‘floodiness’.
Maitland’s a little floody.

Anyway, we found the perfect little three-bedroom cottage – circa 1870 –eat-in kitchen, toolshed, double garage, chook enclosure, too good to be true.

The ever-so-helpful souls at Tony Cant Real Estate are apparently still failing to tell people that the place is fairly riddled with white ants:



Lucky Mick didn't post that deposit check.
We’re still looking..

Well hello! #2

It was a very Oxford evening.
I hadn’t planned to stay, but various friends emerged and beers were bought and visits to the smoke-in wardrobe led to sundry introductions and inevitable peril.

I was happily chatting to Shane from Brisbane, whom I’d met an hour or so ago – he was a headhunter for mining companies or something – when a group of four elegantly barge into the space, one queen in particular catching my eye. He had an imperious air and a hairdo that was an unsettling – a possibly non-ironic– toned-down Flock of Seagulls tiered bowl-job. In his twenties, you know.
He turned out to be such a cunt I fully expected a Linda Blair’s face to appear on the back of his head every time he flicked his gaze away. He had two friends rapt in laughter and one aplogising to me on his behalf.

My last words to him were “see you soon” and I believe he said “can’t wait”. I caught a cab home.

Sorry I’ve ignored this blog by the way.
More to follow shortly.

I lost my camera - it's hampering.

Here’s an old shot of a bloke I haven’t seen in years who was always at the Oxford… no more.

How do you say bravo in Mandarin?

That was amazing. I bet stocks in drum kits will soar:


Then there was this (they did invent fireworks after all):



But this, I have to say, was unexpected. It was a gigantic version of those metal desk accessories onto which you'd press your face in order to make a shiny facsimile. Sensational, and apparently based on an ancient invention:


Also, this mind-boggling, seemingly holographic 'sheet':



And, like I mentioned before, their 'Nikki' - cute as two buttons, plus she got to fly as well!:


I was rivetted and thus didn't get my act together to get a shot of them all popping out of those undulating rectangles.
I totally thought it was some gigantic computerised mechanism.
Unbelievable.

The rest was fabulous, but that part astounded me.

I knew it was going to upstage everyone.

"Do you think she knows she's the Nikki Webster of Beijing?"

Female Channel 7 commentator.

Photos to come.
Mesmerising.

On the hunt

I was reading Joe My God - awesome blog - and there's a raging forum over an article in Out magazine about Manhunt destroying the scene.
Sorry - gay culture.

I wrote the column below four years ago. It almost seems quaint (the number of men online in particular):

At 7.20 a.m. yesterday, 300 Sydney men were logged onto Gaydar. At 3.15 a.m. on April 1, there were 233. The most I’ve ever seen is almost 800 on a recent Friday night, which brings us to the question:
Is typing the new cruising?
I’ve had a Gaydar profile for a while now, which I access out of sheer boredom and voyeuristic urges. I scan the pages, checking ages first (oooh, 52!) and looking for little red dots. For the uninitiated, a red dot designates a racy photo, usually a disembodied penis, as opposed to a blue dot, which usually means someone smiling on a windswept beach. Very laxative commercial.
I don’t have a pic on my profile, which is considered poor form and does nothing for my strike rate. Still, I’m uncomfortable with the idea of friends and acquaintances – most of whom visit the site – perusing my peccadilloes and I do not, under any circumstances, want to know theirs. While I’m open-minded about most things, discovering your best mate is into extreme nipple play and Lycra is unsettling to say the least.
When I tire of seeing the same names (will 8inches4asians ever find true love?), I’ll venture outside, so to speak, and check the profiles from around the globe. This can be both depressing and heartening. Although it’s sad to imagine the solitary queen in Tadjikistan sitting in front of his computer, waiting for that elusive pop-up message, it’s good to know the language of audition and rejection is universal, even in the world’s trouble spots.
OK, so you’re a gay Afghani. Your options are limited, right? Nevertheless, you have your standards: “must be white skin not indian pls”. Because if you’re going to “suck and give buttom” the least they can do is conform to your racial profile.
Similarly, “TYPICAL TERRIFIED ZIMBABWEAN GUYS NEEDN’T BOTHER!” contacting the couple in Harare, and if you’re in the Maldives, I hope you’re into “hicking” and “rufting”. Oh, and “a Top would do nicely”, although given the number of apparently greedy bottoms in this world, good luck finding one, skinperv.
So where does this all end? Is there a tipping point at which every gay man with online access gets sucked into the system? Will the scene eventually be like The Matrix, only with less clothing and marginally better dialogue? And will I become addicted like so many others?
Rather not say.

Update: I just checked. 8inches4asians has either found his one and only or changed his handle.

Bizarre footnote: I typed 'manhunt' into Google image search and got a series of stills from some gory computer game.
Strangely, no dick pics:

The vicarious good life

My sister Justine arrived from London late last week with my two little nieces. I haven’t seen them yet (Luna Park beckons) but I caught up with Justine on Friday night – well, I tagged along with her regular catch-up with girlfriends, always a splashy affair. It’s basically the one night of the year I go to an expensive restaurant.

We went to Mad Cow at the Ivy, a ginormous complex of bars and restaurants in the city. Fab fit-out, but by far the best feature was the fact that it’s essentially Sydney’s biggest smoking lounge, designed as it is around a big courtyard, with this tree in the centre:


The bartender told us, “If you can see sky, you can smoke.” Finally!

It being a Friday night, the place was heaving; a well-dressed mosh pit. As the evening progressed I noticed an increase in stiletto-wobbles and dodgy man-dancing, the latter being forgiven for the fact that the music was pretty fucking great.

I suppose getting a straight guy to dance is a triumph in itself. It’s never less than amusing and occasionally hot, although far too many resort to that low-impact, malfunctioning-robot back-and-forth. I guess anything more flamboyant is frowned upon...

As for dinner, it was delicious and eye-crossingly expensive. My martini bill alone was shameful. But Justine, as always, insisted on paying. She’s a barrister; I guess she can afford it.

Put it this way, this was the tip:

Absolutely knackered

This part-time work set-up is hard to get used to. The work itself is good, mind you, although working late in the week means I’m dealing with a publication has lots of advertising features on “non-invasive” but nonetheless gruesome-sounding procedures, all in the name of beauty and well-being.

It can’t be long before these pampering institutes are offering women brand new heads, available in an array of colours, shapes and facial expressions. Personalities sold separately.

My regular part-time job will be early in the week, so I’ll be working on other, more news-based titles. Until that starts in a in a week or so they’ve been giving me some gigs on a nice fat freelance rate. I can hardly complain.

Having said that, getting up at 6.30 in this weather is a bitch.

Untwink #7

Channel Seven had the perfect midday movie yesterday – Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven. Gorgeous melodrama. I really should have seen it on a big screen.

To me – Dennis Quaid as a hot closet case aside – the most magnetic thing in it was Raymond the gardner, played by Dennis Haysbert. Why she didn't just ditch everything and jump into his arms is, well.. that's melodrama.

Haysbert had his first role on Lou Grant! (see Untwink #1.) Then he was on Laverne and Shirley! The Incredible Hulk (as Guard!) The A-Team! Knots Landing! Magnum P.I.! Buck Rogers in the 25th Century!! A lot of other things no one's seen!!!

You might know him as the President of the United States on 24 or as Jonas on The Unit.

Any way you take it, he’s six feet, four-and-a-half inches (if IMDB is anything to go by) of spectacular. And that voice.
I particularly like his Dallas era:

A T'Wanda too far...

Celebrities regularly get a grilling over their choice of name for their offspring. But an article in the Sydney Morning Herald leaves them for dead. And it’s from New Zealand.

Following are my favourite snippets from a piece on a court judgement denying a couple the right to subject their newborn daughter to lifetime of torment, if not alcoholism:

– Parents make fools of their children by giving them eccentric names, says a New Zealand judge.

– Judge Rob Murfitt of the Family Court launched the attack after finding a girl had been named Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii.

– Judge Murfitt, who made written findings on the issue public, cited other names such as Number 16 Bus Shelter, Violence and Benson and Hedges (twins).

– “The names Fish and Chips, Masport, and Mower, Yeah Detroit, Stallion, Twisty Poi, Keenan Got Lucy and Sex Fruit have not been registered,” Brian Clarke, Registrar General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, said in a statement.

I never really liked the name Brad (thanks to Rocky Horror I was repeatedly called Janet), but I do think I think Remorse has a nice manly ring to it…

A cock too far

Mick and Ray met each other for the first time on Saturday; turns out they both grew up in Punchbowl. (That always sounded so glamorous as a child, much like our Beverly Hills – then I went there.)
Ray is 70, Mick is 57: Cue much discussion of premises long gone and still hanging in there, the notorious pub with regular brawls and conversation about other stuff from which I drifted off.
It was a great night, dominated as it was by genuinely fascinating tidbits about past neighbourhood life, shady and otherwise.
For one, back then they were all driving pissed home to the suburbs from the city... sounds terrifying the way Mick cheerfully recounts it.
They were also both thrilled to escape it.

After dinner at the Judgement Bar, Raymond, exhausted pilgrim that he was, went straight back to his room at the Royal Sovereign that I’d booked. Mick and I made a pilgrimage to the Oxford and stayed a while… and crashed some time later.

I bid Ray farewell this morning.
I’ve known him for 16 years and he’s a blast:

He started as a window-dresser then went into TV and advertising,
He has a voice for radio – never used, much to my consternation.
He let me stay at his place for two months, years ago.
He rides a motorbike.
He has several piercings that are NSFW.
He’s a great photographer.
He just polished my parquetry!

Now that’s a good pilgrim.
Although I do worry about him turning my apartment into the House of Cock:

Yum Cha, Dark Knight

Jeffrey picked me up in a cab to head to Chinatown early this afternoon.
I’ve never has such a quick ride through the city; all the threats against pilgrim-threatening motor travel have been most successful.

We had yum cha at the Golden Something in the mammoth Market City complex and then sat down for The Dark Knight. We were a little early, so we sat in an empty theatre for twenty minutes listening to electro music that elicited 5am memories both of us wished we hadn’t had. All it needed was a tweaking queen asking for a ‘spare ciggie’.

The movie itself was great, totally belying its running length and Heath Ledger is fantastic. He absolutely owns every scene he’s in.
A movie star.


Seriously, from his first appearance, where you get that shock of recognition, he tics and snarls and I then forgot he was dead until his final scene, and then it became unnervingly sad.

Still, highly recommended.
I wish I had points system…

HiDarl canoodle

I do love the word 'canoodle', particularly as it seems to be the exclusive domain of celebrities.
No one ever refers to having had a really good canoodle last night, yet magazines are constantly referring to this titillating activity.

Well!
I witnessed a bona fide canoodle on my way up Liverpool Street this afternoon. On my way home after lunch, I noticed a pretty, skinny chick in skintight pants and one of those superfluous loopy scarves. And big sunglasses. She looked vaguely familiar.
Then I noticed she was with a vaguely girly guy in equally tight jeans - Omigod, it's Daniel Johns from Silverchair.

I've seen Daniel Johns up close (at Club Kooky, once, briefly) and the man is fucking gorgeous. Seriously pretty.
Anyway, I clicked and was momentarily thrown - the two of them together seemed definitely aware of their impact, which was fairly fabulous. They stopped outside the Darlo Bar and had a flagrant moment of young love (not quite a pash, more a kiss-and-giggle-I-wuv-you-too moment) but then I realised I was staring - at a rock star and his hot new model girlfriend who's totally made him forget all about Natalie!! - so I crossed the street, happy but perplexed.

Men like Daniel Johns totally jam my gaydar.

WALL-E now, please

WALL-E is by far the most exciting movie prospect since at least two Pixar movies ago.

It looks sensational.
The fact that Ella Fitzgerald's "At Last" is used to introduce the Eve robot is enough:


I'm beyond describing my geek overload.
I just want a job with those people.

I mean - look at him:


Rapturous reviews aside, I honestly think these days Pixar movies are the only ones to genuinely excuse a sickie and/or 'doctor's appointment', etc.

Go fish

Ray took this among his sundry pilgrim shots.
It's my favourite.