I got recognized at a bowling alley at 3pm on a Sunday. As someone who’s never been on TV (non-game-show category) or murdered someone, I don’t count as a celebrity. Normally when you see a celeb in the wild, it’s just at the shops or at a footy match or somewhere normal people tend to flock. The bowling alley is a bad PR move. I have no business being that close to eight childrens’ birthday parties at once.
There’s microplastics in every ball, who gives a shit.
To the woman who came up to me and said “John! I loved your show!”: you made my day. I was so taken aback at being perceived that I failed the test of normal conversation. I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name, but at least we’ll always have Camilla’s 11th birthday.
On to the news!
Eat!
Consumables that don’t perish.
· I’m most of the way through the Ashley Madison documentary on Netflix detailing how they were hacked in 2015. The lurid, scandalous details of 37 million spousal affairs got leaked to the public. Sorry, but if the most famous hack victim you can find for an interview is a YouTuber, the stakes just aren’t that high.
· People who didn’t love Furiosa are merely suffering a bias from the chemical overload that is witnessing Mad Mad: Fury Road, one of the best films of the century. My housemate and I saw Furiosa in VMAX and upon leaving the cinema, she said it felt like she’d been shot. My only issue with both films is that Furiosa has an American accent, something I thought we’d all silently agreed to patriotically exclude from Australian media.
· I’ve also thought about this tweet 30 times a day for the past 30 days.
Pray!
Wishful thinking with no follow-through. It’s called manifesting!
Despite clocking in at 6’2” and having broad shoulders, culturally I identify as small. If you physically want to be in the space I occupy, I will contort my way out to appease you. I don’t take up real estate I don’t need because quite frankly I don’t deserve it.
You want to walk three-abreast on the footpath? I implore you. Here, let me step in the mud with my white New Balances.
You’d rather reach over me at the restaurant to talk to someone, instead of getting up to mingle? No stress, I’ll lean back and look at the ceiling ‘til you’re done.
POV: I just shrunk myself for you. OK it’s a stretch.
Sickly, I only acquiesce to shrinking myself down if it’s a straight man expecting it. To quote Katherine Ryan: “don’t take up too much space! What if a man wants to golf in it?”
There’s an old wives’ tale that instructs how to maintain your space on a footpath: stare straight ahead at the horizon over your oncoming nemesis’ shoulder and don’t make eye contact. I tried that once as I was walking up Gibbons St in Redfern as a man was barrelling down. At the 11th hour he side-stepped, clearly bewildered that he’d been bested by someone who listens to Chappell Roan. Gay people can be anything these days, even nuisances.
But I felt so guilty. He didn’t deserve my hostile takeover of the space we share. I should’ve walked on the grass like a common dog. One day I will golf in my own space. All I need is the self-worth of a straight man. I just don’t know where to find it. I swear they used to give it away for free in Nutri-Grain.
Trying to grow a many moustache at the moment, but I accidentally grew elf ears. Either way, I’m taking up more space.
Glove!
A personal reality from a real person.
I had a seizure last week.
Quick download: I’ve never had one before, it was a life-altering experience, I am safe and fine. Mum and bub doing well.
According to people I met this week who are more qualified than me, it takes about a week for the brain to recalibrate: I’ve spent six days coming down off an overload of chemicals that drained me of all HP. The closest experience to this I’ve had was when I pirated the Lost series finale in 2010 and was so overwhelmed I had to take the next day off Year 12.
If you can help it, I wouldn’t recommend having a panic attack combined with a two-and-a-half-hour seizure while you’re home alone and your phone is off. Luckily, I sent a typo-littered transmission to a friend from my nearby laptop who came around and called an ambulance. I hope they all enjoyed listening to season four of 30 Rock in the background for half an hour as much as I did for most of the evening.
The premiere episode of season four is called “Season 4”, which is the name of the restaurant in which the cold open scene takes place. Stupidest show on television.
When I could muster opening my eyes to look at the Lead Paramedic, I was shocked. There’s no way a man this hot, of my age, is here right now, seeing me at my worst. Rationally I’m sure he can’t think too poorly of me, but the shrine to botched-plastic-surgery Sims characters in my stairwell might paint a different story.
During times of terror, finding something grounded to focus on can be incredibly helpful. This is bullshit advice in the abstract, until you realise nobody told you the focus had to be on something good. All I could think is – this man’s moustache is exactly what I’m trying to grow right now. How does he get his so straight? All the hairs go south instead of directly out?? How often does he shave his non-moustache areas to really make the moneyshot above his lip pop? If I had my phone on me, I’d have taken a photo of his face to bring to my plastic surgeon. In The Sims.
Are you a Joy, Armando, or Katelyn? Sound off below!
Don’t get me wrong: having a seizure is scary and overwhelming. I always assumed people having seizures were passed out, stone cold. Nope! Another lie perpetuated by the Hollywood Illiterati. I was wide awake, experiencing every emotion I could name at once. Anger, shame, shock, fear, contempt, contentment, and strangely, relaxation, borne from submitting to whatever was controlling me, calmed by knowing it was out of my hands, and maybe this would finally be a valid excuse to silence the nagging voice that says I should be unpacking the dishwasher.
It was the closest thing to an out-of-body experience I could ever discern. My emotions and my body, mixed together in overdrive, powerlessly swirled like a cocktail atop a glass stem resting between someone else’s fingers.
Moving forward, my life story will always be split into factions: pre-mix vs post-mix, like a cinema Coke. Knowing you lost control once suddenly means it could happen again suddenly.
A new everyday consideration has entered the arena. Remind me why I’m sending emails for a living again?
Before you go…
My critically-criticized comedy festival show Microsoft Orifice is back for two final encore shows, one in Wollongong on July 4 and one in Sydney on July 28. I’m filming the Sydney show for a future release, so I am once again asking, what do I have to do to see you there? Name it, I’ll do it.
I’m very proud of this show and would really love it if you came, or your friend came, if they’re hot. It’s pretty hard to fill seats outside of a festival season so if you saw it and liked it, please tell a friend.
You’re hearing it more and more.
Yours in Christ,
John “Gay-Lover” G.Lover.
Watching Furiosa AND a seizure. I know which one I would prefer.
I’m a Joy