80s fashion: a touchy subject (Part 1)

The men, the mullets: Mick and Dave.

Loads of stuff in the 80s was, and still is, pretty great. 

But it wasn’t all black and white. It was fluoro, shiny, eye-wateringly bright and a bit hyper-colour.
It’s always fun to borrow from other decades, and today’s kids have been known to turn their hungry eyes to the Greed Is Good decade.

Generation X, and the younger Baby Boomers, have been watching this revival very carefully, mainly because they are concerned you crazy kids might moonwalk into the vortex of stupidity that was ‘80s fashion.

It’s all fun and laughs until someone gets hurt.

Musical maverick MC Hammer boasted at the end of the decade, U Can’t Touch This. He was alluding, I think, to the fact that his clothes – and indeed his moves – were too hot to touch, like molten lava. Unfortunately, the friction caused by his enormous synthetic pants was the only thing raising a sweat. (You can buy MC Hammer “old-school rapper pants” on eBay. Search under “costume” – that’s a hint).

The following items have been filed in the Hammer-esque category “Don’t Touch This”.

That is, they should never be revived, well at least until every person who grew up in the 80s has gone to the big Studio 54 in the sky.

OK,  let’s ‘‘break it down’’.
Garments made of parachute material: Aviation kit, usually pants and jackets,  should be worn only if you are doing a job that has ‘‘Air’’ in the title. 
“Air Guitarist” doesn’t count.
Jumpsuits: Now this is a controversial area, as a few of my younger female friends have admitted to owning new-age jumpsuits. I’m still going to say don’t touch them, especially if they have elasticised waists/backs, and good luck avoiding that camel toe.
The jumpsuit is particularly bad if you are a bloke. 

Any doubts? Check out David Bowie and Mick Jagger in the Dancing in the Streets video. Yes, Jagger’s shirt and pants are  puffy, but his mate is rocking out in a snakeskin jumpsuit. The only thing that saves him is a cream trench coat, and that’s saying something.
He looked more than happy to be wearing the get up, but I’m guessing that had something to do with his love, at the time, of Peruvian marching powder rather than fashion joie de vivre.
So, to sum up, only wear a jumpsuit if you are qualified to work in an enclosed space, a carnival worker or involved in a HAZMAT ‘‘situation’’.

Knickerbockers: They appeared on the Paris catwalk a few years ago but never took off. For one good reason: they look bogus. If you have any doubts, put on a pair – preferably made from velvet or corduroy – and ask someone to take a picture of your arse.

Lady Di fancied them, but she also thought Chris De Burgh was a musical genius.
I know of no man, outside those in New Romantic pop groups, who wore knickerbockers in the 80s.
But, if you are a young male who is convinced that the knickerbocker will revolutionise your wardrobe, enact a 24-hour cooling off period and, in that time, Google pictures of Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Nik Kershaw and Ultravox in their heyday. They usually paired this pant with a frilly, or “poet” shirt. Bless their little synth-pop hearts.

Any garment with zips and ties that is able to be transformed into a jacket, dress, shorts, skirt, bag and boob tube: I bought one in Bali in the 80s. I got it home and realised it only looked good as a crumpled mess at the bottom of my wardrobe.
Tight acid-wash jeans: These look putrid worn on their own, but it’s a whole different ball game when they’re matched with an acid-wash denim jacket. If you commit to this combo, you also have to commit to a greasy mullet and a criminal record. It’s the law. 

One sequinned glove: Enough said.
White court shoes with  ankle socks, or anything else: They look like the ‘‘dress shoes’’ your great aunt pulls out for  weddings. Always did.
In the next ground-breaking instalment of this fashion report, I will discuss the perils of chemically induced curls and man makeup.

Zen and my shed

I have a girl shed and I’m not afraid to use it.

The little bundle of joy was brought into my world as a heap of panels wrapped in plastic.

A bucketful of rivets later, it had blossomed into a fine figure of a shed. The icing on the cake: it matched the colour of my house perfectly — it’s a girl thing. 

Who would have thought four walls and a roof could enhance not only your backyard, but your life? But, for me at least, it has.

Plenty has been written about blokes who regard their sheds as temples for Secret Men’s Business. In these havens males can tinker, drink home brew, get away from the kids/the “ball and chain” and think about, well, nothing much.

I did a quick stocktake of my female friends and not one of them has a girl shed. So why is it that I have yearned for one since I bought my first house about 15 years ago?

 I guess my love of sheds is genetic, inherited from my father who is a notorious hoarder (he prefers ‘‘collector’’) of all manner of stuff that he swears will one day either come in handy, be needed by a mate or realise $1million at auction. As far as I know, the family of mummified rats he found in the Great Shed Clean-Up of 1998 haven’t attracted the attention of Christie’s yet, but the old man lives in hope. He’s marketing them under ‘‘antiquities’’.

Besides my dad’s pride and joy, the sheds I knew and loved as a child were inhabited by my granddads and uncles. These man caves had a few things in common: the smell of grease, a damaged roller blind on the window, a bench displaying the ‘‘work in progress’’ (usually a car part), a bottle or can collection and a dodgy transistor radio that seemed to only pick up Dad Rock AM.

As a happy little single, I have no need to escape anyone in the big house, but a certain peace descends upon me when I enter the girl shed. Maybe it comes from a sense of purpose.  If I’m standing at my shed’s threshold I have work to do, tools to collect, stuff to find, world domination to plan.

At one stage, my parents owned a hardware store and I happily worked there at weekends. It was here I learned that hardware knowledge was power. I  made it my business to acquaint myself with screw threads, gauges and the intricacies of plumbing paraphernalia after a few tradies sniggered at when I nervously asked if they needed help with screws. Like a scene from Carry On Hardware, my response was to yell out across a crowded shop to my father:  ‘‘Jimbo, these confused blokes need help finding a screw’’. 

 I have no mummified rodents in my girl shed, but I do have an impressive collection of jars filled with screws, nails, nuts, bolts, wall plugs and other top stuff. They are lined up like weird museum specimens and elicit the appropriate level of interest/awe from male shed visitors. Some even pick up the jars for a closer look, turning them carefully before eventually nodding knowingly and restoring them, reverentially, to their spot.
Female visitors are mostly impressed by my collection of hooks on which hang power cords and ropes. The hooks are sturdy enough, but not exactly industrial grade as they are decorated with flowers. Consequently, they lose a bit of cred with traditional ‘Sheddies’.

I’m most proud of three galvanised shelves. They belonged to a former boyfriend who forgot to take them when we parted. They fit one wall perfectly.  I guess the shelves, unlike the ex, were always meant to be mine. That said, every time I look at them I mentally give my old mate the two-fingered salute.

As I was sorting through my hardware in the former ‘‘shed’’ — an old cupboard under the house – I discovered about six Allen keys. I’m going to come clean and admit I have no idea what they are used for, despite my extensive hardware store experience.

Regardless, these shiny specimens have their own jar as the penny might drop some day and I’ll start Allen key-ing all those things that need Allen key-ing. I could ask someone, or Google it, but that would spoil the mystery. 
Yes, my girl shed is almost complete. The only things missing are my gratuitous Hottest Tradies and Sizzling Firemen calendars.

I don’t care if they are a few years out of date, it will give the shed the right vibe ... 

It’s a girl thing.
  

Panic in the suburban wilderness

It makes me wild when suburbanites are confronted and angered when they have an "uncomfortable" encounter with native wildlife. 
A few weeks ago, in my neck of the wild woods, a fired-up kangaroo lashed out at a teenager in a suburb built near bush. Sure, it's horrible for the teen who was hurt, but maybe if we stop appropriating huge amounts of the roos' home (aka 'vacant' bush) for inefficient housing estates, we could all live in harmony. 
Bats, possums, roos, snakes, spiders and wombats need somewhere to live, eat and thrive. 
Take it away, and they'll plonk their furry, scaly arses in your suburban backyard.

Dump the cliche

Women can be their own worst enemies.
Why do celebrity types, after being dumped by their husbands or boyfriends, wait a year and then come out with "I Learned To Love Myself After [enter dumpster's name] Left Me" media blitz?
Usually these women have lost quite a few kilos, have accepted that their dumpster is now dating - or has married - someone who's 100 years younger than him, and are getting all giggly about the prospect of returning to the "dating game".
Just do it OK? Shut up about it.
These stories are not inspirational, well not to me at least. They are based on a cliche that's trotted out all the time in magazines and the "chattier" (see "white noise") sections of newspapers and the TV news.
You rarely, if ever, see dumped celeb men paraded in this way. Apparently they are allowed to get fatter, or skinnier, go silly with their mates and generally carry on with getting over being rejected without the nation judging them. Then, in time, maybe our hero will meet someone, maybe he won't. Amazing.
All this goes on without lame stories about these poor dumped blokes undergoing extreme manscaping to make themselves more attractive to the ladies, starving themselves or wondering aloud if anyone will ever love them again because, after all, they aren't that young anymore.
Maybe these dumped men have been approached to tell their story, but said no.
There's an idea. Just say "NO". A single word with so much power.
Yes, being dumped is horrible and can tear massive holes in your self worth, but this crap hurts women more.
Ladies, it's time to dump this cliche.
C'mon, I'm sure you always suspected it was a stupid, boring, good-for-nothing presence in your otherwise fabulous existence.

Face it, it's a minefield

I don't think I am alone when I say Facebook drives me nuts.
It messes with my mind, makes me laugh,  makes me cry, makes me sentimental, grumpy, nauseous, bored, mystified and confused.  And, on the odd occasion, I can experience all these feelings at the same time.
Facebook can do that.
With just a tiny tweak of the scroll bar, you can be engaged by an insightful comment, snorting with laughter over a friend's drunken selfie or stupid joke, chuffed about how deliriously happy a girlfriend looks on her wedding day, gutted by news of someone's passing, enamoured by the first photos of mate's baby, shocked by a news grab about another atrocity in the world or mystified by a post that can be described only as social road kill: you want to look away, but it is so compellingly bad that you just have to give it a closer look and maybe a sly prod to see if it really is that stinking awful.
It reminds me of the TV, except you know the stars of these shows (or at least know them through another friend who went to primary school with a bloke who remembers your brother who beat him up in the playground for stalking you at play lunch — true story).
And, just like the Idiot Box, you could always just switch it off. But only the strongest among us can turn away from the passing parade and never look back.
I have ditched Facebook a few times, only to be happily reconciled a week later.
I stood strong until someone mentioned that I was missing a bit of niggle between two acquaintances and, like a cork on the tide, I was inevitably drawn back.
I was talking to a friend today about starting a Facebook court where you could ban 'friends' for a certain number of days over various indiscretions. Each person would have to make up their own rules as tolerance levels of "sharing" vary — just like pain.
 For example, some might genuinely be interested in what you are preparing for lunch or dinner (usually with a pic). Others would find a soggy tea towel more engaging.
Here is my list of indiscretions that will attract a ban (one to 10 days, depending on severity and frequency)
Posting what you are having for dinner: just to clarify, if it is a saveloy with a few peas, or any variation on the three-veg-and-meat theme, you are banned for a few days. If it is from McDonald's or any of his mates, same penalty. If it is a photo of the only sausage left after you accidently set the kitchen on fire, that's OK. If it is a lump of chilli con carne that looks like Elvis, that's freaking unreal.
Posting a pic of your child doing nothing: c'mon they have to be doing something mildly interesting, or at least wearing a silly outfit or a bucket on their head. Not just, sitting/standing/staring at nothing in the backyard. Interest factor: nil for anyone not known as "nan" or "pop". This rule does not apply to photos of anyone's dog, as dogs are always interesting — especially mine — remind me to post the latest photos of them sleeping and chewing on their toys, awwww.
Posting that you are feeling sick: everyone knows you are hoping the boss will read it, making your 'severe gastro bug' seem less bogus.
Couples over-sharing details of mini-breaks: call me crazy, call me envious, call me heartless, but I don't care if you and cutie-pie went to a seaside B&B and ate lobster and drank spumante on your private deck. Actually, the only people who might be interested would be Facebook stalkers who take an unnatural interest in their ex-partners' activities.  If you post a photo of anything to do with you and your latest squeeze in a hot tub, you are banned for life.
But, I have a few loopholes: if any of the pictures are of you and Daniel Craig or George Clooney on a mini-break in Paris/Rome/Lake Como, please share them with me because you are a legend ... and I wouldn't mind to see the odd shot of them (just them, mind you) in the aforementioned 'banned' hot-tub.
I will throw out this rule completely if Mr Craig surprises ME with a trip to New York. In which case, all 1,000,000 of my devoted Facebook friends will be flooded with details and photos, as they will be THAT fascinating.
I'm sure there are more indiscretions, but I have the attention span of a budgie these days owing to my whirlwind life on the social network.
It's such a random place where everyone is clamouring to be seen and heard ... but I guess that's just life.

Op-shop OMG

Question: What's creepier than a clown?
Answer: A clown with a yo-yo.
Freaking out the kids has never been cheaper ... this joker is just $4 from my local op-shop (aka thrift shop).
I'm pretty sure it's from the Wayne Gacy Kids Collection.

More hearts than you can poke a cattle prod at

I've just returned from outback South Australia where I was taking part in a documentary about women from different walks of life learning to become jillaroos.
 I won't go into the details of my brush with the world of film-making and farm work just yet, as I am still a little shell-shocked and trying to process all the sights/sounds and experiences of what turned out to be a mammoth month — mentally and physically.
Watch this space ...
But, I am happy to report that I won a few hearts.
Three to be exact: I was given two stone hearts retrieved from the red dirt (one is included above, the other is so tiny that it would not have shown up in a photo) and a rustic tin heart with my initial on it.
 I bought the fancy red one myself, so that doesn't count.
These random hearts were given to me by people who barely knew me. But their timing, in each instance, was impeccable.
As if on cue, these sweet little symbols turned up just when I needed to show some ticker.
How heartening.