Betwixt the tits and tots!
Eat, Pray, Glove!
The populist Julius Caesar would be mortified to learn the month we named after him became the tax return one. Refusing to complete your tax return should be lawful under peaceful protest. If you MUST do your tax return, I highly recommend taking an edible first then trying to beat the clock. It’s the only way I managed to do it in under 45 minutes. Suck it, Pomodoro!
In nicer July news, I got to perform my solo show at the Wollongong Comedy Festival and, reader, let me tell you: the vibes were ON. It was in the front room of a library with a projector in the ceiling and a dream in my heart. I know nobody in Wollongong so was delighted to see a small crowd had formed, even the straight 18-year-old who came with his parents and laughed at all my faggy jokes.
I’m doing the show one last time in Sydney on July 28 which I’m filming for future release. It’s only occurring to me now, as I’m writing this, that maybe putting something called Microsoft Orifice online in the public domain might get me sued.
Whatever, let’s read some reflections before Microsoft take away my computer for good.
Eat!
Consumables that don’t perish.
One of my many snobby takes about TV is that The Mole is like Survivor for intellectuals. Netflix dropped season two of The Mole this month, and oh god I want to spoil it for you so bad, it’s so tense, it’s so thrilling, it’s so surprising, oh god it’s juicy, Christ it had me fizzing and jizzing until the very end. If you don’t watch it you hate art, fun, and me.
PlayStation must have a bug in my house, because a month after I was saying they should put Tomb Raider: Legend back on the PlayStation Network, that’s exactly what happened. The 2006 adventure game brought the Tomb Raider series back from the brink and in 2024 it brought me back from the grave. It’s probably the first one in the franchise where Lara’s a complete bitch, if that does anythin’ for ya.
A new pop trio-collab dropped the other week, melding the beautiful angelic voices of Kylie Minogue and Tove Lo with the interruption of Bebe Rexha. I feel mad for Tove Lo that she must mispronounce her last name to make it rhyme with “Scorpio”. Never has a song been so mid to me, yet get this much airtime. Kylie Minogue is the Lebron James of Katy Perrying.
Pray!
Wishful thinking with no follow-through. It’s called manifesting!
At the risk of sounding rich and beautiful, next week I begin a five-week trek across Europe. Hardly original. It’s borderline embarrassing to go to Europe to find yourself when you’re over 30. You may as well get a face tattoo that says “I SPENT MY 20s ON LEXAPRO” and cut out the subtext.
To be fair, I’m letting history repeat – I did a five-week trek across Europe by myself when I was 21 back in 2014. When you’re 21 you haven’t had enough alcohol in your lifetime yet to become tolerant to it. I was socially unstoppable: traveling alone to new cities, drinking alone at bars, leaving my passport alone on the train. Now I’m 31 and vodka doesn’t work on me anymore.
I was too much of a diva at 21 to fully submit to hostel life. I kept to myself in a hostel or dedicated my life savings to staying in hotels 80% of the time. This time I’ll be travelling with my friend Annabelle, often in the same bed, forcing me not to keep to myself. That’s gonna make it really hard for both of us to use our vibrators.
Just like yours, my Instagram feed is currently full of girls from the HR department of old jobs whose surnames I forget sipping Aperol in Mykonos with their tits out. All I want out of this Europe trip is to make it my own (and maybe go to where they filmed Kath & Kimderella, if there’s time). I pray that once I’m done with Europe, everyone else cools it with Europe, too. In my fantasy, I am the last person to ever go to Europe for summer, making me the best to ever do it.
I’ll be in Eastern Europe for three weeks then in Edinburgh and London for two. Once I fly home on September 5th, everybody can shut the fuck up thanks.
Glove!
A personal reality from a real person.
I always wanted to be a buff gym rat ever since I was a little… horny in the 2020 lockdown. I got a personal trainer early on because I simply have too much money. I learned so much from him about form, diet, and how the government are inflating the COVID death numbers so they can justify suffocating small business owners. Based on his recent pivot into Fitness TipTok – a term I just made up – I assume he’s burnt a lot of (glute) bridges.
One thing that never made its way into my frontal cortex was how to do a deadlift. You want me to keep my shins straight, but also push my butt back, but also keep my spine straight, but no not like that, more like this, also there’s lats involved maybe, don’t forget the lats, have you pulled with the lats? also if you don’t engage the core then none of this matters.
I don’t know the difference between my back and my core. I have a Christian education. God’s focus areas are the hands, heart, and the burning bush. As far as I’m concerned, whatever’s going on betwixt the tits and tots is mush; the core could be anywhere. If God wanted me to engage my core he’d have labelled it correctly.
I inherited two things from my father: a crooked nose, which he wasn’t born with but collected after his face met a knee when he was the dunkee in a basketball game at 20-years-old, modifying his DNA; and a mild scoliosis causing uneven hip height and a sensitive L3 vertebra. Even a moderate-length sit on the couch is enough to damage me for days. It’s manifested in the following ways lately:
Twelve months ago, I was mid-deadlift and heard a shattering crack that left me almost immobile for weeks.
Eleven months ago, I was on my hands and knees mopping my bathroom floor and felt a series of fine china plates collapse out my spinal hutch. I was immobile for weeks.
Six months ago, I sneezed outside of Redfern station and felt the single rubber band holding my vertebrae together snap my L3 clean off. I had to just stand still outside the concourse for a few minutes, unable to perform any motion, and pretend that staring at the ground in the middle of the footpath was what I meant to do.
After swearing to never do a deadlift for the rest of my life, recently, I got cocky. OK I got sick of not getting abs from doing planks and only planks cos every other ab exercise hurts my spine. So just like Wicked, deadlifts came back for an encore season. And just like Wicked, it turns out it was an encore we didn’t need.
Surely some 10kg plates would be fine to ease back in, right? Foolish. My hamstrings got strung, my spine got spun, and I considered buying a gun. Even after a year of rehab and low kilos on the bar, God said this is not my path. I can feel my spine trying to escape its flesh prison every time I turn, lean, breathe, get dressed, or god forbid, exist.
I’d invest in a personal trainer again to guide me into deadlifts for 2024 but I’d honestly rather stay rich in exchange for a bad back. If it worked for Stephen Hawking, it’ll work for me.
Before you go…
Sunday July 28 is my last encore of Microsoft Orifice at Improv Theatre Sydney so don’t say I should’ve told you sooner.
Right after it on July 28 I’m performing at the Honey Roast of Annabelle James (aforementioned European traveller) as part of her farewell before she goes to Europe and doesn’t come back.
Not to keep giving Annabelle airtime, but we both guested on an episode of Basecamp Podcast together discussing the downfall of Jamberoo and our new hills to die on, such as “cops should never be my age” and “men and women are incompatible”. It’s unhinged.
I love you for reading, or skimming. A click’s a click.
This read, resurrected me at a Las Vegas airport, where hopes and dreams come to die and people get married for Glove.
That’s not how you mop John.