I’ll keep going if you do!
Eat, Pray, Glove!
I’ve flown too close to the first-world sun: somehow, I trained my body to completely shut down if I go 6 weeks without a holiday. Even a fake one, where you take your laptop to a new location but continue the same work, like I did in Shellharbour a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, wherever you go, there you are.
Variety is the spice of life and I’m microdosing it. It’s the only thing that keeps the Black Knight at bay. In the last month I spent a few days in a regional city just for fun, got new headshots done, and bought new earrings. Free will: it’s not just a setting in The Sims!
I love to – no, need to – shake up each week from the last. I won’t be entertaining musings on whether this is an ADHD response. And now, over to John with Sports!
Eat!
Consumables that don’t perish.
I don’t like being lied to which is why I don’t read fiction books. However, I broke my rule for Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, a short sci-fi novel about scientists entering a sectioned off, secretive zone of land that’s fucking around with nature in ways nobody can understand. Smashed that bitch in a week, which for me is an Olympic speed-read.
Officially: I am the last person on the planet keeping up with RuPaul’s Drag Race. The Season 17 cast are delivering in all the ways I want: low self-esteem masquerading as misplaced confidence (Hormona); queens who aren’t interested in doing drag or being interesting (Lana); an outward and undeserved hatred for every other queen (Kori). Oh, and the Badunkadunk Tank? Camp is BACK.
Meanwhile, Apple Cider Vinegar. Apple Cider Vinegar. Apple Cider Vinegar. This is so embarrassing, but it better sweep the Logies. RIP Belle Gibson, you would’ve loved Adobe Photoshop generative AI.
I swear to god the only palatable sitcom with a laugh track from the last 20 years is How I Met Your Mother. I lied earlier; I like a TV show that tricks me! I’m just a fool! Having finished an extreme binge-watch of all nine seasons on Disney+ I feel confident in saying it totally holds up, just ignore the traumatic abuse most of the female extras cop at the hands of Barney. I liked the ending and it completely made sense for the narrative of the entire show start to finish, sue me, neanderthals.
Pray!
Wishful thinking with no follow-through. It’s called manifesting!
Just like the worst time to go to the gym is the first week of January, the worst time to attempt a sober streak is during Dry January. Why would you spend the last days of your holidays setting up goals you’ll resent setting as soon you’re at work?
Lucky for me, my sinus system is a frail machine. A series of weights and pulleys that emit dust clouds when activated. A machine whose cogs have rusted from decades of grinding and wheezing. A fleshy computer running on DOS, hosting a virus with no antidote, teasing victory through only a factory reset. And since I’m too happy to kill myself this month, the solution to clear my ENT maze was quit drinking for a while.
Three delicious weeks I spent sober-curious. Living next door to my favourite pub and having mostly gay guy friends made that a near-impossible task, but I was sick of being sick (trademark pending – that phrase is my “I need a vacation from this vacation”). It turns out that getting a lemonade is easy, and saying “I’m gonna head off” before the sun sets is even easier.
I love being home! All the things I bought are there.
But they weren’t lying about the benefits. My skin felt clearer than it’s ever been, I was sleeping really normally, and I took the first good shit of my life. The underlying chest infection I was fighting off eventually took the hint. Alcohol is poison, and while being drunk is fun, so is having an immune system that actually clocks in to its shift.
One day I’d really like to stop drinking, unless it’s someone’s birthday or a wedding, or it’s at a going-away party, or I’ve had an exceptionally bad day, or if someone offers me a drink, or if there’s a hang, or if I’ve had an exceptionally good day, or if I was stoned earlier, or if I feel like it. Sydney-Cali Sober (trademark pending).
Glove!
A personal reality from a real person.
Every weekday at 3:00pm the Fishbowl near my house closes after the lunch rush. Every weekday at 3:15pm the teenagers who work at Fishbowl descend on my gym. Donning their uniforms as gym attire, they proceed to hog the machines exerciselessly, pace across the floor, and complete about 40% of a single person’s gym routine among the four of them in 60 minutes.
It’s not just them; the epidemic of groups attending gyms together runs rampant among the unwashed. A group of two at the gym can be cute: sharing the same machine to give each other a rest between sets, having a private conversation as you go. However, the same rule applies to gym groups as it does to shaking your dick after a pee: three or more and you’re playin’.
What the fuck are these men all doing together? Are they intellectually incapable of going to the gym solo? And it is only men, by the way. Women congregate to relax, men congregate to prove they can achieve tasks. That’s why women never got conscripted.
I treat the gym like a museum: I’ll politely do what I feel like then go home as soon as possible. Might touch a few priceless oil paintings on my way through. But my gym, like all gyms, is severely lacking in benches and plates, so groups of early-20s straight twinks (“strinks”?) taking up an extra machine they’re not really using knocks out 2/3rds of my options available. Suddenly I’m trapped in a busy museum where all the patrons are art snobs.
OK, let’s exercise some empathy here. Putting myself in their shoes, what are the potential benefits of being watched by your buddies while you exercise? Three theories, ranked normal to cooked:
Expert advice when you need it. An outside set of eyeballs you trust, there to correct your form and show you the ropes: “I’ll improve in quality with you here.”
Body doubling for motivation. You’re less likely to be the first to give up when you’re suddenly in an endurance contest: “I’ll keep going if you do.”
Showing off without having to perform. The perfect ego-boost activity without pretence because it feels accidental: “I was just living my life and you caught me.”
Unfortunately I think the truth, in the heart of every Fishbowl employee who can’t go to the gym without his equally-muscleless fishy friend, is that all three theories are held true. Underpinned by one mega maladaptive schema: boys who go to the gym in groups are fighting feelings of social isolation but think any group activity too frivolous would be considered gay.
At least gay guys reclaimed group exercise. There’s empowerment in going to the gym with the boys then stopping for iced lattes after. That’s punk as fuck and I’m not joking.
Before you go…
Never forget to not avoid watching my stand-up special on YouTube! I keep having people come out of the woodwork to tell me they “watched it earlier and it was great!”. The lesson is, if you watch it without telling me, it means nothing.
I’m MCing one of my favourite comedy rooms in Sydney, Stand Out Comedy, this week(!) on February 26th and 27th for their Mardi Gras spunktacular. They’re letting me kiss all the audience members on the mouth!
Goodbye forever!