The Letters I Wrote that Did Not Convince Janeane Garofalo to have Sex with Me
I recently wrote a piece on TNB about my entirely earnest and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to sleep with actress and comedian Janeane Garofalo. I made my case to Ms. Garofalo – that I felt very...
View ArticlePlaying It Straight
Yes, OK. I admit it. I, in my foolhardy youth, was in the cast of the Australian production of Playing It Straight. If you’re unfamiliar with the show, well, first of all, you can be justly proud of...
View ArticleI Hate You for Being Funnier than I Am
Some day, I like to think, I will write Important Books¹. My Important Books probably won’t spark revolutions, or shine the light of justice on the unseen foundational weaknesses of the free market, or...
View ArticleThe Dumbest Thing I’ve Ever Said
Not the dumbest thing I’ve ever thought, however. That particular honour belongs to a moment in San Francisco – I was walking down Castro, I glanced across the street, and I saw a burger joint called...
View ArticleOn Change
A friend of mine doesn’t meet new people easily. With the diagnostic aid of the internet age, I supposed it’s possible he may be suffering from a touch of Asperger’s (if there is such a thing as a...
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Laughing All the Way Down
So, given that I’m in Auckland right now with the incomparable Zara Potts, this will be a co-written effort. Simon: I’m currently on holiday in New Zealand – my friend Mel and I are spending a few days...
View ArticleDear 2009: Fuck You
This isn’t actually a post from Melbourne. I’m writing it from a sparse and ambiently-lit hotel room in Christchurch. So that little ‘Melbourne, Australia’ tagline is a lie. But that’s 2009 for you....
View ArticleA Box Full of Evil and Fifteen Balloons
I decided to do something different this December 31st. For as long as I’ve been celebrating New Year’s Eves, I’ve been greeting the subsequent morning with blurry eyes, a hangover that proves...
View ArticleKissing in the Rain
My introduction to the concept (in the mathematical sense) of chaos theory was Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. I read it as a kid; as a kid my favourite part was when Nedry got his at the wrong end...
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San Francisco International – Arrivals
I stole an umbrella in San Francisco; I’m not proud of it. Maybe I didn’t steal it – maybe it had legitimately been abandoned and the theft was that rarest of things, a victimless crime. The umbrella...
View ArticleBurning Bright
In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe – Carl Sagan It was Christmas Night and I was sitting in a girl’s apartment. The two of us were on her couch, one of her...
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San Francisco International – Departures
I was idly stirring an iced tea at a sunny table of the Chateau Marmont when the ever-debonair and deadly Iron Duke Haney said something important to me. ‘Listen to that sound in the background,’ he...
View ArticleLions 1, Amazon 0.
eBooks, schmEbooks. What began as an issue that turned writers and lovers of printed books alike into Chicken Littles who ran through the streets screaming ‘The Kindle is falling!’ (I can’t help but...
View ArticleMaybe It’s That Damn Sasquatch Again
I have come to accept that life will always be full of mysterious happenings, strange events, and unknowable riddles. These enigmas, that regularly pop up like a cosmic whack-a-mole game or the...
View ArticleDear Ed McBain
Dear Ed McBain, I recently re-discovered your 87th Precinct novels. Man. Let me tell you. While you never really scaled the literary heights like, say, Pynchon, Wolfe, or Seuss, that was a solid series...
View ArticleDear Tim Kring
Dear Tim Kring, I have a special request. One which I’m sure that many people hold close to their hearts, fondly whispering to the skies, possibly with the preface ‘Dear Tim Kring, wherever you are…’...
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A Date With The Dice Man: The George Cockcroft Interview Part 1
I was 21 when I first got my hands on a book called The Dice Man by virtue of a gift from a friend. It was a book that caught me from the first page, introduced me to the idea of deciding one’s fate by...
View ArticleA Quick Nine Years
I’m not entirely sure how the topic came up, but for whatever reason, I recently started thinking about the last time I’d had an actual, capital-OG, Official Girlfriend (as opposed to Original...
View ArticleWeathering the Weather
This is all Brad Listi’s fault. He had to go and talk about the weather, didn’t he? I was sitting in my car yesterday, watching as, in the space of about five minutes, the sky turned black. Soon after,...
View ArticleDear Corey Haim
Dear Corey Haim, Goddamnit. 38, man? 38? Fuck. I didn’t see Back to the Future until I was about 17 (whenever the trilogy first came out on DVD). I didn’t see Teen Wolf until about two years after...
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