toby's blog

Sorry, this bit isn't funny, just interesting. Perhaps.

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=276

This is a rather awkward summary of a much better articulated chapter I recently read in a book called Radical Son by David Horowitz which isn't online, so this shamozzle will have to do.

Basically, it's the story of the two sides of the argument over shutting down bathhouses in San Francisco in the early years of AIDS in the 80s. On one side, some peeps saw immense political value in the bathhouses and promiscuous sex (fuck I hate using words like "promiscuous" it makes me sound like Bronwyn Bishop). On the other side some saw them as public health menaces.

I'm well aware that in some circles David Horotwitz is a declared lunatic, and I ain't sayin' nothin' 'bout nothin' but I think it's at least interesting to consider that a) how we have sex is a powerful political act, and b) when and how to weigh up those politics against practical problems.

And c) I must admit, having largely missed them, I have a powerful nostalgia for the days when being gay was still a bit edgy. Sometimes I think all the bow ties and Robyn concerts in the world won't make up for that.

Also, if I'm late to the intellectual party, and we covered this at Uni  in the '90s when I was busy wearing happy pants and unsuccessfully dating women, sorry to have wasted your time, here's a heinous Jennifer Rush remix for your trouble:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yk9fsGiN2Z0

Thanks to listener Gilla for putting me onto this shit.

So, this bit of work has been circulating on the emails of those in whose circles I move, this week:
http://www.beat.com.au/music/one-direction-hisense-arena

In summary, it's a fairly hilarious hatchet-job review of the recent Melbourne One Direction gig, from one of our free-hipster-street press. You know, the kind of smug inner-city newsletter that refers to "Sufjan" without further qualification and features a special micro-brewery liftout just so they can rate every single one "no stars (irony)".

This review is so boring, do you even need to read it? There will be a derisory reference to the proportion of teenage girls in the audience - tick - although this dude has the scuzzy courtesy to at least note that the fourteen year olds he's sitting next to are hot - nice one, Mister Kelly! There will be a reference to the manufactured, automated nature of the music - tick...

...and then the pubic hair thing. Always the pubic hair thing! Every time someone talks about One Direction, there's a quip about their  lack of pubic hair. Like that's the issue. "Did you know Mozart wrote a sonata when he was 9?" "Pfft. Skinner.". And in any case, you can be so sure? For all we know Harry's got a bush downstairs so furiously expansive you could hide Ewoks in there.

If this guy wants to be consistent in his criticism of a commercial act that shamelessly targets a specific demographic with formulaic music, why isn't he paying out on LMFAO, the gonzo ringtoners whose bullseye is a Gold Coast uni student wearing a surf singlet and gurning merrily on either his eighth beer or first half-pinger?

Let's play an amusing parlour game! Help this nubile young chap fill out his sign:

Get busy with your pithy Photoshopping and post your work to the Facebook page. Here are some I've prepared earlier, to fire your filthy imaginations:

 I guess you can click on them or something to make them bigger or something.

 Yesterday I spent two Eurotastic hours with the delightful and dishy Hikaru Freeman at Joy FM, recording his Joy Eurovision podcast with him. Hikaru's a real Euro savant and it was great to talk shop. I taught him a few things about Norway and he really schooled me in Spain. We laughed, we cried, we sang a few choruses of Eres Tu and embraced.

Get into it here, I simply insist:

http://joyeurovision.com/2012/04/12/the-joyeurovision-discs-toby-sullivan/

The show consists of us discussing my "Eurovision Desert Island Discs" if you like. I had to choose 7 songs, plus Hikaru sprung a bonus track on me. And then in episode 2, we spent like 20 minutes riffing on this godawful Spanish piece of shit he'd dug up.

For those of you playing at home, here are the links to the actual songs:

Linda Martin - Why Me http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EakbBFYwDY
Chanee and N'Evergreen - In A Moment Like This http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX7YoQ77fyY
Venke Knutson - Jealous 'Cause I Love You http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koVTWBybYas
Pernilla Wahlgren - Jag Will Om Du Vagar http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bljaYiFaeQ
Eric Saade - Manboy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtK7lsAdBos
Wencke Myhre - Ein Hoch Der Liebe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaT5jDSOIyE
Nanne Gronvall - Avundsjuk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX1nKSh2QGk
Svenne and Lotta - Bang En Boomerang http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19PempjBpVs

and in ep 2:

Las Supremas de Mostoles Erus Un Enfermo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj4M-S0zPOo

 Look, you don't have to be Grunty McFuckring to appreciate how important to our culture* is the gay street press.

Until recently, in the absence of any institutionalised responsibility for recording the community progreass and social monuments, in many cases the gay street press will be the only surviving record of Our Stories. It's our War Memorial. If the War Memorial was dumped in gutters every Wednesday morning for whoever had the energy to bend over and pick it up for free.

But srsly folks, as a rapaciously commercial document aimed squarely at gay men's minds, the gay press is a reliable, if ugly mirror for us all to consider once in a while. CASE IN POINT: check out this ad, included in this week's chronicles:

It has recently come to my attention... that gayse love a bit of their Grindr. Grindr, of course, being the nifty lil' phone app that lets you know which paftas are in the nearby vicinity, and in fact exactly how far away they are. This is either a modern miracle or the end of days, depending on your view. Either way, srsly guise, any second now they'll be dispensing trade from a vending machine on the Tokyo subway, at which point I will learn fucking Japanese.

If you've seen the Talking Poofy live show anytime in the last mesozoic era, you might have seen our live demonstration of a similar product, about ready to roll out of the TP Research Labs (proudly supported by the Ponds Institute) - Groandr!

Groandr is similar to Grindr in as much as it does give you information on the homosezzuals around you, but rather than indicate how far away they are as Grindr does, Groandr indicates how tedious they are in real life. This can save you valuable time, money and trips on the cross-town bus at 4 in the morning.

Dear Computer Journal, has it really taken me nearly a month to bring myself to write the final chapter of Talking Poofy's world tour of tediously provincial Australian state capitals?* Or is it only now, listening back to the podcasted reports of our antics that I can remember what happened? In any case, for some reason I feel the need to complete the cycle, and write a final chapter to resolve everything that occurred.

I won't test your attention/slavish fanboy devotion by repeating what you can already hear on the podcast, so let me fill in some additional blanks for you:

What sticks in my mind most persistently about that day, apart from the stench of that awful sweet champagne that had so much sugar in it, it gave diabetes to the grass I poured it out onto, is the aftermath. The next day.

 Send Santa Grunty your Christmas letters!

Have you been a good boy? Send your Christmas requests to the Poofcast's major sponsor, Grunty McFuckring, and he'll respond to them on air. Who knows? Grunty's a resourceful man, he might be able to help! It's like the Make A Wish Foundation meets the Dungeon Warehouse.

Email your letters to poofcast@talkingpoofy.com.au before Saturday if you can.

Friday November 18, 11.30am.

I don't think I really gave you a full report of the show on Wednesday night: we did the show munted on serapax, some lesbians flipped us the bird from the audience, we got a guy up onstage who was so young he was still studying for his birth certificate and then on the way home, as Scott told me, he "gambled on a fart and lost". So: that's preview night out of the way!

Human kind has never known misery like our sorry selves the next morning. Seriously, we were getting messages of condolence from Fukushima. It was very difficult preparing for the show in the evening, just because the alcohol poisoning lingering in our systems made the pre-show champagne quite a disagreeable experience.

In the end the show was great in my opinion, I really liked it although I think the audience were a bit cooler than last night, which is fucking ridiculous I cannot imagine so much as cracking a smile at the grizzled turd of entertainment we squeezed out on Wednesday, but so be it, you can argue with popularity but you'd be wrong. 

Thursday November 17, 9.30am. Adelaide.

I think I am still a bit drunk from last night, our opening night here at the Feast Festival. "Still Drunk" is probably my least favourite result from the morning lottery that is waking up after a night on TP, even less welcome the "can't move/talk" double headliner I scored in Hobart last week. 

I woke up this morning and proceeded through the standard post-TP checklist: Am I face up? Tick. Do I recognise where I am? Is it where I was aiming for? Tick. Is there anything pooled near me? No? Tick. Right, let's take a look at memories: do you have any? Patchy, Captain. Mostly bright flashes. Okay, we'll just have to work around that. Now, move your head slightly, but suddenly. How did that feel? Absolutely painless?!? O dear, that's worst possible. You sir, are still a bit drunk.

Still Drunk means you have to go through the onset of your hangover without the cover of sleep. It's like unanesthetised surgery. But it's no good wishing I'd stopped at the fourth bottle now, just have to press on.

 Well here it is! The first ever Talking Poofy Sex Survey! Hmmm... has someone been a bit overwhelmed by the Census, p'raps?

But seriously folks, almost every letter we receive at Dear Talking Poofy includes the question, "is this normal?". So we've decided, fuckit, let's find out.

The Talking Poofy Sex Survey, is probing, insightful, anonymous and only ten questions long 'cos you have to pay for more than that. Click here and let the oversharing begin!

And of course, if a random assortment of multiple choice options won't do your opinions and experinces justice, feel free to email us with your story: poofcast@talkingpoofy.com.au, or leave a comment here.

Seeya, swingers!

Look, I could explain the specific chain of events that lead me to watching this video clip*, but if it's okay with you, I'd prefer to keep that between myself and the brainwashed henchmen at Google that sell that information to marketing consultancies. Thankyou.

 I imagine watching this video is much like a night out in gay Liverpool itself, you keep waiting for the good bit to kick in, thinking to yourself, "this can't possibly be it!", right until the bitter, bitter, so very bitter, end.

* highlights include, in reverse order:

Have fun.

Dear Gays,

I know that many of you were born in the nineties and other barely-feasible bullshit like that, so not all of you will understand the full implications of this sentence: lately, I've really been getting back into Hazell Dean.

Hazell Dean was an early success for '80s Hi NRG pop svengalis, Stock Aitken and Waterman (SAW). For the '90s kids who don't know who SAW were, imagine if the Black Eyed Peas had a child with Dennis Waterman. SAW's greatest triumph was going on to invent Kylie Minogue (not the whole thing, just the shit, permed bits.).

Before Kylie however, SAW were churning out a string of ruthlessly efficient, hexagonally-drummed, minor eurohits for H to the D, including such forgettable non-classics as Whatever I Do, Who's Leaving Who and Searchin' (Looking for Love).

Hazell Would singe the top 50 from time to time and made a substantial enough name for herself, but since her last big hit (1988 number 1 in South Africa, thankyou. Apartheid? Apartyheid!) she's rather faded away to a career that now largely consists of one sordid Scandanavian pride day appearance after another.

 Hey kids! It's time for some school holiday fun! 

Spot Scott!

Solve this puzzle: can you spot Scott in the following pictures? Careful, he's pretty tricky at hiding!

Hey, Girls, I made a list of really great things about the Peel!

1.