Playgirl’s Mr Movember!

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can always tell when a bloke is only growing a moustache for Movember.  For some reason the dignity and gravitas that usually accompanies a genuine nose-muffler, the type grown by ringmasters, philosophers and maths teachers is completely missing. Movember mo-growers either carry it with the grace, aplomb and subtly of an oversized novelty sombrero, brashly waving it around as if to say ‘I’m a wild and crazy guy I want to make party-party’. Or they especially furtive about it, ducking their heads when they catch you checking out their face-friend and giving you sheepish looks through their eyelashes which say ‘I don’t usually look like this’.  

The former I can deal with using the same patient good nature that I use to deal with other people’s ribald dads but the latter I find infuriating because they don’t seem to realise that their bashful moustache makes them about 34% more attractive to me. It makes me so sad that the first day of summer that things gonna be long gone and the city’s make-out appeal is gonna slam right back down to ‘minimal’ until the drunken Christmas parties roll around.

Annyway, I thought I do a little tribute to the most popular ‘tache styles I’ve seen this year. I have obvious favourites, despite loving them all. As my model I have used English actor, J.J. Fields below;

J.J.s pretty awesome permanent moustache honestly make me think, ‘Is there anything wrong with marrying someone based solely on their facial hair?’ The answer is no!

The Bryan Ferry

Although similar in appearance, this thing should not be confused with the Shifty Sam, because it’s  about a billion times more  sophisticated in a never-to-be-attempted-by anyone-other-than-a-thin-attractive-70’s-crooner-or-F. Scott-Fitzgerald kind of way. Just look at J.J. in this baby, he looks like Indiana Jones if he had decided to take art history instead. These things are so classy they have to be rinsed in champagne and styled with tiny silver combs. If I was even  half as well maintained as I should be to deserve a guy sporting one of these,  I’d have to be Audrey fucking Hepburn*

Notable Examples: Bryan Ferry, Clarke Gable, Sammy Davis Jnr. 

Chopper Gringo Hulk Hughes the 70’s Porn and Tennis Star

‘Oh look at me! I’m 100% man oozing with frustratingly charming machismo. I’ve got absolutely no imagination or sense of humour, but I’m great at making out! I’ve never really understood irony but some girl with a fringe and glasses told me my ‘tache was ‘ironic’, and that’s expanded my pick-up range by 20%! I’ll keep milking this fad until it disappears and use the phrase ‘moustache rides’ indiscriminately! Come on ladies, you know I’ll win you over eventually!’

And they do, they always do.

Notable Examples: That dude in Dead Wood, Bubble-O-Bill, and Nick Cave

Patches McGee

Whilst there are a lot of sensory memories about high school which I may still find sexy but patchy pubey facial hair is not one of them. There’s something about this one reminds me of that kid in at school who developed too quickly and had man hips, appalling skin and a shadowy moustache before most other kids could turn 13. Although we should all be impressed with the fact that many men can grow a credible nose-neighbour within a month, there are many who try and fail, miserably. I suggest that these guys don’t bother looking like teenaged nightmares and make generous donations to their more hirsute fellows.

Notable examples: The Woman for Le Tigre, boys from the Brewery Coffee shop on Erskine Street, Leonardo DiCaprio. 

Shifty Sam

Nothing says ‘I’m trying to smell you while you’re not looking’ than a shifty Sam. Even J.J. looks like a sexual harasser in one of these. These kind of thin, wispy snail trails are favoured by office creeps, adult book store owners and the skinny weird villain in costume dramas. But what’s not to like about that? I always said that the best thing about creeps is their perseverance and tenacity.

Notable examples:   Chris Cornell,  John Waters, Crispin Glover (ok, he doesn’t really have one but if he did it would be weird).

Captain Flourish

This is truly the king of all moustaches! It’s majestic, rugged, stately, regal and manly all at the same time. I like these best when they are growing on charming old-timey Southern Gentlemen who say things like ‘I say, well, I say, its mighty fine to meet ya, miss Jo-Maybelleline, would you care for a mint julep and the deed to the plantation in my heart? If you would do me the honour of takin’ it, well, I’d be mighty obliged’.

However, the Captain Flourish may need more than a month to really get going. I don’t think it’s possible to grow a mo in secret, but if you could, it should be this one. Then on the first of November you unveil this beauty and let us all bask in its glory for the next thirty days, a memory to treasure for the rest of my life.

Notable Examples: Corey Stoll, Tom Hardy in Bronson, Mel Gibson in his 'I'm Completely Mad with a beard now' phase. 

Finally, as I woman I felt that I’d been put at disadvantage with Movemeber, being unable to really participate (not that I don’t try, the results are underwhelming). That was until I heard about this lady. I think her story is pretty cool, I think she’s pretty cool. I’ve said it before, I wish I had a credible tache... 

Also also also, before I forget, y'all should really head over to Movember Australia's official site, where you can donate, play games and check out more amateur mos online! Exciting!

*I am currently more like Katherine Hepburn, but the really old Katherine Hepburn who turned up to the Oscars wearing her gardening clothes, covered in dirt.

NO ENTIENDO LO QUE HABLA! (I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT!)

I may seem to you guys to be a well-bred, learned and well-rounded lady, brimming to the upturned pinkie with sophisticatedliness. But this is simply not true. I know a selection of things very well (deli meats, Rolling Stones music, Harry Potter, filmographies of English and American character actors and Star Wars), the rest I pick at like a giant life buffet.  This being the sitch, I sometimes embarrass myself by not knowing something that a lot of other people know.
Case in point: I was having a conversation with my friend, Colonel Beardsley, about strip clubs and how I’d never been to one. The Colonel had been to ‘one of these hell holes’ and offered to take me, saying that he would be Virgil to my Dante. This is the point that the conversation stopped making sense to me because I, like at least a bunch of other people, have never read Dante’s Inferno. Even though it was a really very good analogy at the time and probably would have made someone slightly better read than I chortle knowingly whilst smoking a pipe, I drew a blank and looked like a moron.

Luckily I have the ability to retain some information to a point of freakishness, and I really do enjoy discovering new things to learn, squirrelling facts and data till it can be put to good use. So I have totally saved that Dante one for a time where I can bring it out and look clever at a party.

Do other people do this? Talk about things they haven’t read, seen or experienced just to keep up with the rest of the world?  Good, you’re all fakey fakes like me. Here are some things I haven’t read/seen/heard/experienced that I only understand from absorption:

Hip-Hop: As a child of the 90s I know a disturbingly little about hip-hop. Seriously, if you asked me who my favourite hip-hop artist was I would say Kanye West or Snoop because I have no fucking clue about anyone else. I manage to get away with this whole discrepancy by singing along to the sample, enthusiastically making finger guns, going 'oh yeeahh, o'course' during music discussions and dropping like it’s hot at any opportunity. Now that I have admitted to this I will probably get invited to way less parties.

Superannuation: Let me see if I’ve got this right. Rather than being conscientious about my savings, my job will steal money for me and save it should I live till later, instead of letting me spending it now on stuff I need like food and iPhone covers? This means that when I’m old I can spend it all on investment art and guitars? That’s what my parents seem to have done.  I don’t really understand my health insurance either because I’m a human ‘being a grown up’ fail.

Twin Peaks: It’s like Northern Exposure but with murder right?

Fifty Shades of Grey: I would be more interested in the names of fifty shades of grey paint chips than I would be in this whole phenomenon. Really, it sounds like a really boring and serious version of Secretary. Snooze. But! Just because I haven’t read it doesn’t mean I can’t Wikipedia it to get the main plot points and make jokes about BDSM-enjoying, confused, submissive ingénues at its expense right? Same goes for Hunger Games, which is kinda like Hard Target but with kids. 

Deer Hunter: In my limited understanding Deer Hunter means 1.Christopher Walken, 2. red bandanas, 3.screaming in Asian languages and 4.Russian roulette. I can say ‘going all Deer Hunter’ for one or any combination of these things, yes? Note for 2. ‘Rambo-ing up’ is also appropriate if your target is justifiably muscle bound or ironically puny.

American politics: Everything I know about current American politics I’ve picked up from Bad Lip Reading. Mitt Romney =disturbingly stupid. Rick Perry = 'Save a Pretzel for the gas jets'.  Santorum= ewwww. Obama = knows how to drive the car. Fantastic. As Keanu once said ‘I know kung-fu’.

8 Things I'd do if I were a dude

 You ever wonder what you would do if you woke up one day to discover you had a dick? After the initial panic and frantic attempt to find my Brian Doyle-Murray spiritual guide, I think I’d settle in very nicely and get started on my new gender agenda.

Here are just a couple of things I’d do if I were a dude.

Smell Amazing all the time
Seriously menfolk, how do you expect us to get busy with you when you smell like old vegetable sacks full of rotten shoes? All you have to do is wear clean clothes and wash yourself and your body will do the rest. If I were a dude preparing for a date I’d wash with Old Spice, brush my teeth, gently splash myself with cologne, put on clean clothes then run to wherever I needed to be, working up my intoxicating manly musk. Yep, the scent of a vaguely sweaty clean man is a confusingly sexy thing.

Grow a beard
I’ve always envied the stately sartorial statement which is a manly beard. It’s like an extra accessory you can wear on your face. Whereas women have to pay to get their facial hair removed I’d have a legitimate excuse to grow it luxuriously long and lovely for free.

Strike up conversations with likely girls
If I were a dude I would talk to any pretty girl that looked at me appreciatively. I’d make conversation in buses, chat in elevators and flirt at bars. I’d share my umbrella, offer to carry things and generally be courteous and friendly to the point of seeming Edwardian.  I know that this would probably turn out being way creepier than it sounds in my head but once I figured out how to pick my targets I think I could do quite well for myself.

Talk as men do
Dudes seem to bond with other dudes purely on the basis on a mutual  Y chromosome. Seriously, I was having a drink with a mate and this complete stranger sat down with us. Within ten minutes they had exchanged numbers and were planning to watch movies the next day. I overhear real men having hilarious conversations and have devoted some energy into decoding them.  Are they being profound and deep or are they really talking that intensely about melted cheese? One things for sure, I want in!

Play a musical instrument 
I could certainly, happily be the dude who just walks into a place, picks up a banjo and starts serenading people. I don’t know why I don’t do this now, but I know it would be  more charming with my big bushy beard. I would play the banjo, wear a Greek fisherman’s hat and play Appelachian mountain songs… shit I just became my grandpa.

Allow women to style me.
If I were a man I would rely very heavily on the fashion instruction of the women around me, because most of the women I know look amazing all the time. If I took their advice I would almost certainly look interesting, well groomed, hipsterish and hot enough to be up to my elbows in bookish fringy women.

Go topless more often
It’s not socially acceptable for me to get my tits out whenever I like. If I had none, then there would be nothing to stop me from being shirtless 65% of the time.

Not be a dick
Just because society has given me carte blanche to forget appointments, leave texts unreturned, commit constant faux pas, openly ogle, fart, belch and blunder my way through life doesn’t mean that I have to.

Dear Davy, I thought you were wavy gravy...

A couple of weeks ago, someone in the media referred to the late Davy Jones as a ‘prefab- Paul McCartney’. Does that seem like a veiled way of saying that this guy’s entire career was just a cynical attempt to cash in on the Beatle phenomenon and he was an evil facsimile of a sham pretendy man, or is it just me? A bit inappropriate considering he died, and this was a eulogy style situation, but maybe I’m just being sensitive.

Liking the Monkees is a little contentious as the band has come to represent music marketing at its most contemptuous. Everyone knows that the group was put together as an attempt to create the American Beatles, marketed almost exclusively the ‘the kids’. This proved to be very lucrative for a very short time and annoyed a very large group of people. However, you’d think 45 years on everyone would be able to stop being offended and concede the point that they did play their own instruments and they did write their songs… eventually. Authenticity, in some situations, is a matter of time.

Talking about the manufactured Monkees kinda brings up the Lana Del Rey issue. Poor Lana has been given a lot of shit lately. ‘They’re not her real lips’. ‘That’s not Mike’s real hat’. The arguments are the same and in the end I think we should stop and ask ourselves ‘do I really have time to give a shit about this? Shouldn’t I just focus on staying alive, comfortable and happy?’

I mean so what if Del Ray does not necessarily write her own music? Who cares if she might not make her own clips? So what if her fantastic Gangsta Nancy Sinatra trash chic image was perhaps crafted by a group of cynical execs to sell records? I still want ‘Video Games’ played at my wedding.

I think everyone’s beef with Lana/Lizzie/Gangsta Nancy is that she’s denying all these things so emphatically and even I’ll admit that there comes a point where you have to stop trying to justify your lies, wave your hands mysteriously and whisper ‘smoke and mirrors, my friends’. Just admit that you can’t have art without artifice and move on. The Monkees, starting life as a TV show, never had to pretend they were something else.

Ironically the careers of both Del Ray and the Monkees suffered without appropriate marketing. I had never heard of Lizzie Grant and from what I saw on Google, very little could have convinced me to care. Enter cynical musical marketers and boom; I want ‘Video Games’ played at my wedding. The Monkees were running along fine until they demanded creative control (threatening physical violence apparently) at which point the whole endeavour started haemorrhaging money and sense faster than stuck pig.

In any case, I’m sad that Davy Jones is dead. I liked seeing him crop up in teen sitcoms and strange movies, and I was really looking forward to the Monkees tour that was rumoured to be happening this year. He may have started off being the strategic Dream Boat in a fictional band but he went on to be a widely appreciated pop-star, cruise-line attraction and all round good sport, which is more than can be said for Mike Nesmith.

And as I am such a bad sport I’m laying down all my arguments supporting the credibility of the Monkees now before I go:

- The Monkees had a number of credibility increasing connections. Carol King, Neil Diamond, and Harry Nilsson were all involved in the Monkee music making process, either as song writers on performers. Jack Nicholson and the creative minds behind Easy Rider helped with their experimental film Head.

- Mike Nesmith was an established musician who went on the develop the concept of the music video to something of an art form, watch anything form Elephant Parts and tell me I’m wrong.

- Peter Tork was good friends with Steve Stills, if he hadn’t gotten his Monkee break it would have been Crosby, Stills, Nash and Tork (and sometimes Young).

- It would be a very sad thing if we only judged people by a section of their whole career. George Clooney may very well have been in Return of The Killer Tomatoes, but he also gets nominated for Oscars

- One of Lou Reed’s favourite songs is ‘Goin’ Down’- a Monkees song. And if Lou Reed does not have discerning taste then I don’t know what else I can do!

- They are famous and you are not so there.

The LadyVom Manifesto

Once in a life time a band comes into existence that threatens our core ideals of music, artistry and taste. Spume Records are proud to introduce their newest, most dynamically dangerous acquisition, LadyVom.

An all-girl acidelectropopglamrock group in the style of Peaches, The Runaways, Devo and Minty these five luscious ladies deliver gut-wrenching, leg leaping, bile inducing music energy like a punch up the bracket. A volatile mix of raw female sexuality and bone rattling rhythm, these girls are on a jet powered piston into music history!

Spume Records owner Bilious T. O’Really discovered playing in a secret tunnel party in Errskinville and was immediately taken by the group kinetic, laser like intensity and their determination to keep playing even after the audience left. Described by critics as ‘five Iggy Pops, except some play instruments, and they’re girls too’, LadyVom are a force to be reckoned with!

Expaktro Vulgaris - Vox and Theremin
Not much is known about enigmatic lead singer Expaktro Vulgaris. Some believe she was raised by a family of mutes in far hidden village in the Las Hurdes region of Spain. She communicated only through Theremin till she spoke her first words at the age of twelve - ‘Benedict Cumberbatch’. Expactro’s dusky voice infused with mournful theremining and sensual, guttural screams lead LadyVom’s rich abrasive sound.

Alex Vomette - Bass

Known to the press as ‘the funny one’ Alex Vomette is indeed hilarious. She has been known to set the LadyVom tour bus on fire as a joke. But when it comes to her bass playing, Alex is as serious as the plague, standing on the corner of the stage like a stone Aztec goddess of pulsating cadence. Her lurching, grumbling bass line forms LadyVom’s heaving, queasy core. Guaranteed to make your stomach skip a beat.

Lizzie Whizzie- Drums
The first thing Lizzie Whizzie did when she left reform school was steal a drum kit and start playing for LadyVom. Unfortunately the band’s then drummer, Kaka Spiv, had no idea that she’d been replaced and the next couple of months were really awkward for everyone. Lizzie’s drumming thrashes and crashes like an American bull terrier in a steal cage, bring an animalistic rabid frenzy to the heart of LadyVom that’s oh so danceable!

Lady O’Barf- Lead Keytar
Daughter of nobility, Lady ran away from the gilded cage of O’Barf Manor at 16 and has been playing in underground acidpopelectropunk outfits ever since. She penned the iconoclastic ‘Give me all your cash, Stupid’ during her time with Haggy and the Dumdums, but soon left after a creative and romantic argy bargy with titular Haggy Von Moron. Her retching keytar riffs and explosive licks drive the steaming, speeding juggernaut that is LadyVom.

Pukesie Collins- Tamborine and percussion
If someone can beat a tambourine like it owes her money, it’s Pukesie Collins! This spicy unsettling firebrand of pure throbbing rhythm gives LadyVom its subtle mystery and delicate timing. The none-to-secret love child of Stevie Nicks and Rudi Van DiSarzio and Spider Dijon, this bangin' beauty is a multi-instrumentalist, master of the triangle, square and dodecahedron.

LadyVom’s demo single ‘Sick with Love (Hold my hair)’ is available to download on iTunes now, with their debut album Ewww due to launch on April 1^st, 2012

Hack Literature: The Celebrity Story

I just finished reading The Bryan Ferry Story by Rex Balfour (1976), an unauthorised biography about my equal 1st favourite rock-star

For those of you that don’t know who Bryan Ferry is, he’s the front man of the 1970’s rock band/ art project Roxy Music, with a simultaneous solo career that’s been going on for about 35 years now. He was the guy who caused a bit of trouble about ten years ago when he was misrepresented as a Nazi sympathiser, when in fact he had just expressed a liking for the work of Leni Riefenstahl. Not the same thing, but deffinately not great publicity...

Whilst they may be no argument as to Ferry’s musical innovation, inspiration and slight genius, this biography portrays him as the mad stylish reclusive wizard who single handily invented music. An all-round toadying piece of fanatic clap trap.

Moreover, the book was written only three years into Ferry’s career and since then he’s had many more hits, fox-hunting children, divorces and affairs, not to mention the whole Nazi thing, and I can’t help but think ‘wouldn’t it have been better if they had waited?’

Something I have learnt about biographies is that they should be all about mystery, scandal and intrigue. A Kim Kardashian book would just not be interesting because we already know EVERYTHING about her. I don’t think there’s anything I could find out in a book about her and her deepest darkest personal life that I couldn’t find out by simply walking past a news agent. Her life is not so much as open book as it is a large billboard on Broadway, and I don’t care.

Biographies are also all about timing.

It’s strange when young or uninteresting celebrities get biographies about them before they’ve had enough life lived to fill them. I just looked on line and discovered that Justin Bieber has a biography, Justin Bieber: First Step 2 Forever- My Story. Isn’t he about five? To fill a 100+ page book he would have had to start doing coke and getting divorced in kindergarten. All I’m asking is wait until the story is at least two thirds through.

Having said that, it would be wrong to say that celebrities should put out biographies until they are dead, in fact it’s probably good that they don’t, because we know how the story ends and because it means that they can do a big old money grubbing sequel when their lives go to shit. Take for example Rolling Stones Guitarist mark III Ronny Wood, whose biography Ronny came out for Christmas 2007. Not even a year later later he was in rehab, on sabbatical from the Stones, broke and divorced living with a 21 years Old Russian model. I can’t wait to read about that in Ronny 2: Oops, my bad.

I picked up where The Bryan Ferry Story ended in 1975 with another book, the autobiography of his erstwhile fiancé Jerry Hall, Telling Tall Tales. In this ‘book’ Hall goes into great detail about the cuckolding she did to poor Bryan with Mick Jagger, as well as everything she didn’t like about Ferry and how mean he was. Not only was this the airing dirty laundry to the equivalent of putting shitty undies on your doorknob, but it made her come off as a naive, foolish, mean, vain and self-sensationalising moron, which is a shame because I actually like her. Tell all, but don’t be cruel, or people will laugh derisively at the fact that the perfect home life you were so happy about by the end of your book will end in within 20 years.

By contrast Keith Richard’s Life is a beautiful book, one of the best autobiographies I’ve read. It’s told in the spare and wandering style of Richard’s own words, which aren’t half as confused as one would expect. Love, fame, fall-outs, appalling excess and deaths creep into the narrative in a quiet, funny way without wallowing in appalling excess or praising his fortunes. Richard’s neither attempts to rationalise or descends to self-pity.

In short, I would advise you to read this book, and if you are a celebrity considering a biography, I would advise you to wait for your life to become more interesting and so that the disadvantages of hindsight don’t come back to bite you in the arse. I would also recommend a good ghost writer, my services are available.