The American relationship counsellor John Gray – or as he prefers to be known, “John Gray, Ph.D” – came up with a simple explanation in his bestselling book, Men Are From Mars And Women Are From Venus.

I’ve always taken the view that this book wasn’t worth reading. The central metaphor has always irritated me, with its trite gender essentialism fancied up for a pop audience. While I’d never judge a book by its cover, in this case, judging by the title seems warranted.

And yet, an academic study reported this week went to the trouble of properly debunking the theory, and I found reading about it fairly satisfying, so I thought I’d look in more detail at what Gray had to say. Continue Reading →

Parents of girls, I have some wonderful, gender-specific news for you!

Admittedly, it’s not actually my news or genuine news – I work in the media, so just about everything I write about is in fact spoon-fed to me by publicists, but nevertheless, it’s truly wonderful news for all fans of princesses.

I said, PRINCESSES!

It turns out, and brace yourselves, that Disney is holding “an exclusive Disney Princess film Festival which will take place in Event and Village Cinemas between February 9th and March 17th.” And you should definitely take your daughter if she needs a frontal lobotomy and you can’t afford the procedure. Continue Reading →

I used to think Australia Day was the ideal birthday. It’s a public holiday, it’s usually warm, and there are frequently fireworks which I like to imagine are in my honour. And it arrives just as the summer holidays have wound down, giving you one last hurrah before the serious portion of the year kicks in.

That said, 26 January is never going to be a morally unambiguous day. Tacky jingoism and an uncomfortable history of colonisation tend to complicate a day which, in my view, should largely be about giving me presents. This reached its nadir a few years ago, when the day got hijacked by Big Day Out yobbos wearing their flags as capes like bogan superheroes with the power to fly through the air while making ignorant comments about immigration. Continue Reading →

Let me state for the record that I began watching Downton Abbey to write a parody of it. Honestly. I didn’t think – ooh, a period drama, I’m massively into those, bring on the silverware and stiff upper lips. Really. Even though for several weeks in 2011, I had the theme music stuck in my head, and seriously contemplated purchasing a faithful hound of my own.

At the time, I was working on a TV comedy show, and I had a Downton sketch idea that I thought was terribly clever, and to cut a long story short, when we tried it, it wasn’t. In the service of said idea, I found myself watching the whole of Series 1 in about 48 hours. Continue Reading →

Today is my last day of work until mid-January, and while I’ve been looking forward to some down-time, now that it’s almost here I’m beginning to wonder how I’m going to fill it. Sure, catch-ups with expat friends where we talk through their ambivalent feelings about Sydney are fun, and there’s plenty of TV I need to watch (Breaking Bad is top of the list). But that will still leave dozens of hours to fill.

Here’s my summer to-do list. See how many you can get through over your own break! Continue Reading →

This weekend, I had the pleasure of attending my friends’ son’s third birthday party. It was held in Centennial Park, a location I highly recommend for such purposes due to the top quality playground equipment and excellent landscaping.

Unfortunately there was a strong breeze which blew much of said landscaping into our faces, but it was still a delightful occasion. And for me, a learning occasion. I hereby pass my learnings on to you.

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If you’ve never worked in the media, allow me to lift the magician’s curtain a little. You might imagine an army of intrepid newshounds who pound the pavements with nothing more than a camera, a notebook and their trusty fountain pen, searching for stories and doggedly following up every lead, while wearing a battered but fetching trenchcoat and a trilby with a little card tucked in the band which reads ‘Press’.

But you’d be wrong. Today’s media organisations are made up of vast open-plan floors where no writer could ever possibly concentrate for more than one consecutive minute, full of harrowed functionaries attempting to file half a dozen stories per day while continuously revising the ones they’ve already written for the ravenous, insatiable beast that is the internet.

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There’s nothing that I want for Christmas. Absolutely nothing. Peace on earth would be nice, or even a modicum of politeness during Question Time, but I’m not holding my breath.

Same goes for my birthday a few weeks later. A nice meal with loved ones would be lovely, and I’ll even settle for a mediocre meal with people I’m vaguely fond of, but I don’t want gifts.

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Today I looked in the mirror, and a strange, moustachioed man looked back. Add a red cap and it could easily have been Super Mario staring back, taking a brief breather between repetitive Princess rescues. And then I remembered why I look like that. It’s Movember, and so, for the first time in my life, I’ve allowed my upper lip to blossom while subjecting the rest of my face to the razor.

Signing up for Movember, I’ve discovered, makes you part of a not-so-secret brotherhood. All month, I’ve been nodding sympathetically at a number of other blokes in my workplace who are sporting similarly malnourished sproutings beneath their nostrils. We don’t even need to check whether we’re doing Movember – I mean, seriously, why else would anyone grow a moustache? And in particular, grow it in isolation?

Continue Reading →