All posts by Princess Sparkle

Logies 2008

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Curtain up, light the lights – it’s the TV industry’s night of frights.

COME SUNDAY, THE 50th TV WeekLogie Awards will be on and I’ll be curled up on my couch in my pyjamas eating the leftover Easter eggs and watching the annual car crash again. I do it every year and I have no idea why. If anyone out there loves me, please kidnap me, strip me naked and tie me to a boom gate in Narre Warren. At least then I won’t wake up on Monday and feel as if I’ve spent the previous night making kiddie porn.

Invited? Sure I was. I’m just too gutless to go in case I bump into half the television industry. I’m not The Horse Whisperer; I’m The Show Monsterer. Actually I’m The Horse Show Monsterer. Those girls from McLeod’s Daughters have a bucket full of nipple cripples and Chinese burns with my name on them. They’ve even threatened to pull my hair. Calm down, boys. I know you want me.

Can you believe they’re really holding the Logies again this year? Hasn’t someone put that sick puppy out of it’s misery? Don’t give awards to the Australian television industry. Shave it, slap it and throw it in a pit full of Daryl Somers’ jocks.

What is there to celebrate? Wayne Carey has more to be proud of than Australian television. It’s in an appalling state. And if you don’t believe me, switch on the box and try watching for more than five minutes and see if you don’t want to kill yourself.

Going to the Logies is great fun if you enjoy talking to people off their faces who spend the entire time looking over your shoulder for someone else to talk to. It’s like being in a house with a hallway but no rooms. And no roof.

The women are hilarious. After marinating in fake tan for two months and not eating since Boxing Day, they teeter around in their high heels with their bad breath calling everyone darling and then slagging off every darling’s frock before darling’s even out of earshot. It’s dead eyes and strap-on smiles all round.

The blokes get a few drinks into them and go from job-hunting to pussy patrol, and it’s ugly. Boy, is it ugly. Leering sleazy attention-seekers totally defined by what they wake up with on the end of their Logie.

What would I like to see this year at the Logies?

Well, first Marieke Hardy and I should be hosting. We’d just laugh and hurl abuse before vomiting into each other’s hair pretty much like everyone else but without the fake tan.

The food?

Entree would be Sam Newman a la mode.

Main course you’d have the choice of free-range, grain-fed Richard Wilkins or a boned-and-stuffed fillet of Jessica Rowe.

Dessert?

Turkey slaps all round.

If you’ve ever thought you’d like to go to the Logies, trust me, you don’t. Any person involved in television worth their salt wishes they were on the couch in their pyjamas or tied to a boom gate in Narre Warren.

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Logies 2009

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The 2009 Logie Awards.  What did you miss? Pigs in suits and scrags in curtains. Vain attention seeking opportunists suffering relevance deprivation hoping to get lucky with one of the members of Hi5 but happy enough to go slops by standing next to Bud Tingwell when he sneezed.

 

It wasn’t a car crash this year.  It was a 30-car pile up. I should have known.  With nominees for best dramas including Home and Away (Bogans By The Sea) McLeod’s Daughters (Pony Porn) and Neighbors (So You Think You Can Act!) it was never going to be one of our finest moments. Kate Richie (Nice! Inoffensive!  Pretty! Detonate now!) and Ian Smith (the fuddy duddy from Neighbors with no neck who doesn’t speak but gargles) being the Gold Logie favorites made me wish, during the In Memoriam package, that I were dead as well.

 

Packed To The Rafters (I See White People) and Underbelly Tale Of Two Titties (sure it’s drugs, swearing violence and tits but it’s Australian drugs, swearing, violence and tits) sweeping the pool is a chilling reminder that everything on telly is dumbed down, sexed up or ripped off. There was an epidemic of Stockholm Syndrome as talented actors gushed about fabulous scripts, amazing work and incredible experiences as they accepted awards for working on shit shows. Be Australian and take the piss you sucks.

 

This year’s Logies was so trashy it made The Brownlow Awards look like the Nobel Prize Ceremony. “So who are you wearing Stevo” “Some little thing I picked up on Chapel Street mate. I think her name’s Rhiannon and she reckons she’s 18”.

 

I was hopping Gretel Killeen would be fabulous because she is.  But she wasn’t. And even she knew she wouldn’t be. Which explains her four costume changes. The day before I bumped into Joan Kirner and I thought of Gretel.   Because they only let the chicks behind he wheel when it’s all down hill from here.  Hello to Meredith Hellicar and Sue Morphet if you’re reading. The industry was thrilled because they love nothing more than putting the wrong woman into a thankless high profile job seeing her fail and using it as evidence to maintain their unashamed regime of beef for the blokes and chicken for the ladies.

Sarah Murdoch inducted Bill Collins, Mr. Movies, into the Logies Hall of Fame to recognize his  passionate career of 46 years.  You know her.  She’s a model, and married to Rupert Murdoch’s son Lachlan. I’m not sure if her official title is ‘personality’ or ‘celebrity’. Regardless, it couldn’t have been a more offensive choice.  Apparently Bindi Irwin couldn’t do it because she had a spelling bee the next day.

I don’t mind Rebecca Gibney wining the gold. I just wished she’d won it for something other than Aussie mumwho walks around holding a mug then goes to bed wearing a full face of make up.  Gibney won best line of the night as she held her little statue and said, “proof nanas can text.”

My favorite moment was when the Footy Show lost. You didn’t need to be a lip reader to work out what Gary Lyon’s said.  Love a sore loser.  Particularly when it’s a pig in a suit.

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Matty Johns Footy Legend

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Published 20 May 2008

THE saddest thing is that I wasn’t surprised. No, scratch that. The saddest thing is that none of us were surprised that we weren’t surprised. Most of us didn’t even think about it. We just trotted out our knee-jerk reactions, tut-tutted, finger-pointed, rolled our eyes and went on with our business.

Soon another incident will surface that we won’t even bother to file under “scandal” due to the frequency of these episodes. A scandal, after all, is something that shocks us.

Like everyone I’d got a whiff of a bunch of footy maggots and a young girl in a hotel room. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t take much notice. Sexual abuse and football? What next? Horse racing and cruelty? Yawn.

At the urging of many, I watched it all. The Four Corners report on rugby league’s sick pathology relating to sex, women and alcohol. The Footy Show’s pre-emptive strike aired a few days before Four Corners, in which rugby league legend Matthew Johns (who was named in the ABC report) fessed up and apologised – to his wife and family – and was then patted on the back with a “Well said, mate”, from Fatty Vautin. Tracey Grimshaw’s searing interview with Johns.

And, finally, I watched Johns’ colleague Phil Gould on The Footy Show a few days after the Grimshaw interview. Gould spoke of this being “the sledgehammer the game deserves” after “so many wake-up calls yet no one wakes up”. Gould then went on to lavish praise on the courage of Johns and his wife, Trish, for allowing themselves to be interviewed, almost ignoring the plight of the victim. When it finished, I felt as if I had swum through a lake of shit.

And let me answer that next question before you ask it. No, we haven’t heard enough about the football-pack-sex broken-young-girl business.

Our society is in denial about the massive and destructive impact jock culture has on the broader culture. American writer Robert Lipsyte defines jock culture as “the values of the arena and the locker room (which) have been imposed on our national life”. Lipsyte identifies the jock’s sense of entitlement and the belief he is beyond the law, a consequence of “blind adulation from fans, coaches and the media”. He goes on to say that “jocks who subscribe to its values feel the constant necessity to prove their manhood, and the best way to do this is by having sex with a woman”.

Clearly, many jocks feel that the best way to bond as a team is to all have sex with the same woman.

It’s time we admitted and discussed this reality and found ways to promote a healthier attitude in football towards gender and sexuality. No number of footballers running through paper banners or sitting in open-top cars in parades with their children is making any difference. Nor is any number of highly skilled and informed, yet ultimately token, women on footy shows or on boards of football clubs.

The now-even-greyer territory between power, responsibility, consent and vulnerability in sex needs to be negotiated. “No means no” suggests the question is simply one of yes or no, and that’s a simplistic reaction to a complex question. Women’s more assertive and comfortable attitude towards sex, combined with the impact of raunch culture, which has diminished the taboo and increased the accessibility of the sex industry, means it’s time for a rethink.

Equally, the days when it was socially accepted that women were the gatekeepers of males’ supposedly rampant and uncontrollable sexuality are, or should be, long gone. “Don’t walk round in your nightie when Uncle Brian’s here” – the subtext being that he can’t control himself and nor is it his responsibility to do so – is just not good enough. Never was.

The nasty collision of hormones, egos, psyches and alcohol aired in this incident suggests to me that we need public awareness programs and perhaps a manual. God knows men love a manual. The Rudd Government’s recent commitment of $42 million for “respectful relationships” training in schools is a start. Not a great start, but a start.

It also suggests we need to rewrite the rules. The rules that the girl involved “broke” by speaking out. The rules that had the blokes involved apologising – not for what they did, but for being sprung.

These blokes are used to rules; they play by them on the field all the time. But they clearly need a new set to govern their off-the-field behaviour. Rules that need to be enforced by shame. Their shame, not hers.

They may or may not have committed rape as the law understands it, but what they did amounts to spiritual rape. And for that they should be held truly accountable.

 

 

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Tracy Grirmshaw vs. Matty Johns

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Published 23 May 2008

The most stunning television I’ve seen for a very long time was on Channel Nine last week. You can’t handle the truth?  Mate, I can’t handle the truth.

If you haven’t watched Grimshaw’s interview with ‘rugby league superstar” and ‘television personality’ Matthew Johns don’t walk but run to watch it online.  Grimshaw should win a Walkley or possibly the Nobel Prize For Calling A Spade A Rapist. This interview should be on the syllabus of every school.

Seven years ago Matthew Johns and a bunch of his teammates had sex with a 19-year-old girl. Four Corners did a story on the epidemic of group sex involving football teams and interviewed the girl who named Johns.  A Current Affair followed up with one of the most harrowing interviews I’ve ever seen.  I sobbed.  For the victim, the state of football and the mess many of our menfolk are in and that the rest of us are enabling.

Johns repeated the terms “willing participant” “the hurt and embarrassment caused to my wife and family” and used the word “unsavory” to describe what was clearly a spiritual gang rape without showing an iota of compassion to the victim. Grimshaw dismantled the familiar rhetoric with precision that left me breathless. After explaining he’d left the room at one point and then returned to check, “everything was okay” Grimshaw replied, “You see Matthew, most right thinking people would be thinking how could you look at that scenario and see anything was okay. She was 19 years old.  She was naked. And she was outnumbered…..Isn’t there something in your mind that said this is wrong, on every level? This is a vulnerable woman.  She wants more from this situation than we’ll ever be able to give her.”

It was this that unraveled me.

“Lets say she offered herself.  If I suggested to you the women who do that are looking to feel special for a while.  They see you all as sports Gods and they want a little bit of your fame and adulation and your specialness to rub off on them…Did it occur to you that that girl laying on the bed was somebody’s sister someone’s daughter, a girl with hopes and dreams and aspirations of her own?’

John’s wife Trish’s take was,  “His crime is infidelity to me as his wife and I am the only person who can judge him on that.” When asked, “How do you view this girl?” Trish answered, “I certainly wouldn’t like it to be my daughter.”  The look on Trish’s face seemed to say, “She’s a slut who’s stuffed up our lives, ruined my husband’s reputation and my life with it.”  When she said, “I’m glad she’s not my daughter” it may have been unclear to some but crystal to me that she didn’t mean, “because of what that poor girl went through” but “because I would be humiliated.”

I didn’t think Grimshaw had it in her to go one of the most alpha of the alpha males on Australia’s biggest embarrassment Channel Nine.  But she did.  Take a bow Tracey Grimshaw.

 

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Footy Show. Bankrupt orgy of male chauvinism

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Published in The Age June 17 2007

The Footy Show is fooling no one: a misogynist in a suit is still a degrading spectacle.

I HAVE JUST WATCHED three episodes of The Footy Showand I feel like Sammy Davis jnr at a Ku Klux Klan rally, like Dannii Minogue at a Mensa convention, like George Pell in 2007.

I’m not into plants but I like Gardening Australia, I’m not into quiz shows but I like The Einstein Factor, I’m not into cars but I likeTop Gear, so not being into footy isn’t the reason that I’m repelled by this destructive, small-minded, morally bankrupt orgy of chauvinism. The Footy Show is a celebration of the very worst that television, sport, Australia and human beings can cook up. It’s offensive, toxic, corrosive, encouraging viewers to be stupid, shallow and sexist. Sit down, shut up and hang on. And ladies, bring a plate.

The Footy Show is nothing more than media-sanctioned misogyny. And so much less. Tune in and you’ll feel you’ve woken up in 1952. A man in a full body condom, men dressed as women, girls in bikinis, guys stuffing toilet paper down their jocks, dickheads, wankers and yobs. The few women that I did see were leered at, one called “a bitch” and another told to “get f—ed” (both by Sam Newman). I heard the word “sheilas” and could sense that the words “poofters”, “wogs”, “slopes” and “spastics” were just below the surface.

Is it the program, the network, the culture of Australian television, or just Newman that is so offensive? It’s all of them. But Newman really needs to be singled out for his extraordinary contribution to this tragic, puerile, adolescent show that degrades the culture of football, alienates women and teaches boys that females are slaves, trophies or bitches.

No wonder young footballers are taking drugs. How else can they reconcile this bizarre world with real life? And what’s with the suits? Some pathetic attempt to bring respectability to this sad little show? Fat chance.

Newman is vain, ugly, a megalomaniac, a bully. I can’t help feeling that deep inside he would be happy for women to have their brains removed and replaced with a bar fridge. He’s a dangerous bloke who’s paid a lot of money to defile our culture and undermine our intelligence in the most putrid of fashions. For any of you who have sat surrounded by people laughing at this maggot and found yourself thinking there is something wrong with you, there isn’t. There’s something wrong with him. And them.

The Footy Show catapults sexism into an extreme sport. Football shows don’t have to be a cross between a buck’s night and a lynching. And if you don’t believe me, watch Before the Game. It’s not as blokey, and that’s not just because there is a woman on the panel but because the blokes are not as blokey. The jokes are not as blokey. And the content is intelligent. Think Roy and HG, Live and Sweaty, Talking Footy and The Fat. Australia has an impressive history and culture of intelligent, entertaining sports shows that put The Footy Show to shame.

 

 

Pigs In Suits. More on the Footy Show and it’s culture. Sing along if you know the words…

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Northland and Southland

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Northland and Southland seemed poles apart, mainly because shoppers in the south had teeth — and shoes. GROWING up close to Northland, (regional dialect pronunciation: Norflandz) resulted in my magical childhood shopping odysseys being zoned to the Palace of Shoplifting and Festival of Mullets. Northland: No shirt? No shoes? No worries!

The arrival of the child-endowment cheque was celebrated by the collection of lay-bys from Fosseys and school holidays were marked by pantomimes with names like Carry On Up Jack’s Beanstalk or Aladdin My Pants, performed by drunken wannabe Dick Emery types whose biggest claim to fame was once meeting Bernard King. The creepy theatre queens made no attempt to hide their enjoyment of the disproportionate number of times they got the audience of children to yell “he’s behind you”.

The outing was usually topped off with a visit to Coles cafeteria, where we were treated to jelly that tasted like soap and chicken mornay that tasted like spew. Norflandians were either skinny and smoked Winfields or fat and wore sports wear. The number of fat people in runners and tracksuits on any given day meant blow-ins could easily be excused for thinking some kind of Obese Olympics was being held. Alternatively, blow-ins may have come to the conclusion that Northland was a biosphere breeding ground for Chubby Chaser eye candy — the rivalry between potential suitors being so stiff the chubbies were forced to run (hence the sports wear) to set up competition in order to find the keenest and most athletic chaser with which to mate in an attempt to diversify the gene pool and aid evolution.

Meanwhile, the skinny Norflandians were advancing natural selection by doing circle work in the car park in hotted-up panel vans while their offspring performed impact and velocity experiments using shopping trolleys against brick walls. Sure, they could have used crash-test dummies, but why use a mannequin when you could use your four-year-old half-brother who smoked Camels purchased with the money he’d just got from cashing in aluminium cans? I was also familiar with Southland, because my grandparents lived in Mentone. I mean, Parkdale. Their house was the only one in the Mentone street that was, according to them, in Parkdale, yet used Mentone’s postcode. Parkdale was posher. But the only people aware of this were the people who lived in Mentone. We had another relative who didn’t live in Northcote but in Westgarth. When people asked where Westgarth was, she’d reply: “Near Ivanhoe and Hawthorn.”

My memories of Southland are hazy, slightly nauseous and headachey, which I put down to the journey in my grandparents’ overheated Toyota Crown — tartan rug on the parcel shelf, a Thermos in the glove box and the radio stuck on 3AK, Beautiful Music. It was beautiful if you liked panpipes and Manhattan Transfer, which may explain the nausea. The trip was only a couple of kilometres, but because my grandfather — wearing his tam-o’-shanter and an RSL pin in his lapel — drove like a man wearing a tam-o’-shanter and an RSL pin in his lapel, it took 4 years each time. In comparison with Northland, Southland seemed incredibly exotic, almost like a foreign country — possibly because it had a roof garden but more than likely because most of the people had teeth. And shoes. We all have our traditional hunting grounds. Although I loathe shopping centres, there’s an alarming familiarity about Northland. A bit like an uncle you hate but you know all his jokes. For 40 years I’ve lived in our fair city, and I’ve been to almost every shopping mecca — Knifepoint (I mean Highpoint), a place in Northcote nicknamed Poxy Plaza, Doncaster Shoppingtown — but I’ve never been to Chadstone. And it’s time I did. More later.

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God Is Bullshit: The Resurrection 2011 Melbourne International Comedy Festival

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“Gotta love those fundamentalists.  Putting the fun and the mental back into religion…”

God Is Bullshit: The Resurrection part of the 2011 Melbourne International Comedy Festival ON SALE NOW! CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS! The perfect Christmas gift for your favorite frothing at the mouth atheist, or hard core bible basher.

“Who was Jesus? So a long time ago there was this woman called Mary and she was a virgin.  Hang on I’ll answer questions at the end. And an angel appeared before her and told her that she was going to have a baby.  Shhhh boys, let me finish. So Mary gave birth to Jesus who was the Son of God sent to earth to die for our sins. Hey, cut it out guys this is serious.  When Jesus grew up he performed miracles, walked on water, bought people back from the dead fed a crowd of thousands with a few loaves of bread and couple of fish, turned water into wine and then he was nailed to a cross and he died. But he came back to life three days later. Actually hang on guys. This sounds like a croc of shit.’’

Due to popular demand my one-woman show God Is Bullshit is back after a sellout season in the 2010 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Better and now with 20 percent more blasphemy. BUY TICKETS HERE.  WILL SELL OUT! April 1st-24th at Trades Hall (no performances Monday).

Strap yourself in for a death-defying ride through my spiritual journey from wannabe Catholic altar girl to atheist eye candy. Hilarious, moving and profound. Big finish. Trust me.

WARNING! May contain traces of Cardinal George Pell, Tony Abbott, Mary McKillop, liturgical dancing and bizarre Bible stories.

Here’s what some middle aged, middle class rich white guys had to say about God Is Bullshit….

“Deveny’s shock and awe humor does for atheism what Mark Arbib does for espionage. And she’s still my favorite tweep.”

Tony Jones – host of ABC’s Q and A

“Sexier than Christopher Hitchens, funnier than Richard Dawkins, and more ethical than George Pell, Catherine Deveny is not to be missed.”

Peter Singer – Author, Philosopher and Professor of Bioethics, Princeton University

Deveny as the courage to say what so many of us think and makes you proud to be a card-carrying atheist.  I wish she was my mother. Seeing God Is Bullshit was the best $20 I ever spent.

Adam Elliot- Academy Award winning creator of Harvey Crumpet and Mary and Max

“Catherine Deveny, like Julian Assange, exposes, confronts, maddens. She tells the truth to power – and to habit, conformity, timidity and comfort. Dangerous and seductive, she makes me laugh, and laugh…”

Barry Jones, AO – writer, lawyer, social activist, quiz champion and former politician.

“You will be judged.”

Cardinal George Pell – Australian Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.

And a few words from a our favorite Christian lady we all love,

“As one of the freaks who still believe in God, I found even I was welcome!”

Clare Bowditch  – singer, musician, broadcaster, writer, It Girl.

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Interview With The Pluck’s Caitlin Crowley on Happiness

Media

 

  • Caitlin Crowley
  • From: The Pluck
  • November 03, 2010 10:39AM

As a kid I used to love going to parties. There was a lot of depression, sadness and blackness at my house; lots of Catholic guilt. My father was an alcoholic and my mother had a lot to deal with. I was fairly emotionally sensitive and used to pick up on all the negative energy in the house. When I went to other people’s houses I felt very free because I wasn’t around all of that emotional pollution. One of the things I really loved was the lolly bag; the lolly bag represented the great memories and moments of the party that I could take home.

At Holy Name in Preston we had a very funky choir called Credo. Sitting in church was such a frustrating experience, it was boring. But I loved singing in the choir; it was great to have a voice in that very male medieval place.

CLICK HERE TO READ INTERVIEW

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