The death of Australia’s fashion industry is more sordid and terrible than you could ever imagine
Lap Dance 4 Trans Rights… You just had to be there.
Big long recommendation from VICE Australia
Thundercat x ChatGPT = :-(
WE DON’T HAVE TIME
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New horror alert. Have you heard of “time poverty”? It’s a lack of potential time outside of paid and unpaid work hours, including domestic duties and caring responsibilities – yet another curse topping the hefty pile that plagues Australian youth. Unpaid overtime is a bit of an issue here, Aleks Bliszczyk writes for VICE AU, with the Australia Institute’s latest report on unsatisfactory work hours finding, on average, people in their 20s work 5.2 hours of overtime every week – more than double what people in their 50s and 60s do. “For the average worker on the average salary, that’s an annual loss of about $8000.”Respondents in the survey said the top reason for working unpaid overtime was workplace culture or the expectations of their managers. The pandemic and the technological connectivity under remote working conditions only exacerbated it all. A four day work week would fix me.
THE DEATH OF AUSTRALIA’S FASHION INDUSTRY IS MORE SORDID AND TERRIBLE THAN YOU COULD EVER IMAGINE
If you know what I mean by “Alannah Hill”, “Lisa Ho” and “Sass & Bide” you do a lot of opshopping, or you’re a billion years old. These labels were the greats, the national treasures of the Australian fashion industry. But now they are little more than whispers, fading into the ether in the $25 eBay listings of this country’s mothers and grandmothers. What happened to manufacturing in Australia? The truth is all so terrible…. And now our industry is just shit. Have you tried going shopping in David Jones or Myer lately? What if I told you that once upon a memory, it was more than a depraved fake-nice TJ Maxx stuffed with polyester blend and “Made in Indonesia” labels? Would you believe me?[ here ]
LAP DANCE 4 TRANS RIGHTS… YOU JUST HAD TO BE THERE
PHOTO BY TIMOTHY T @TIMOTITREASURE
Back in April, I had the pleasure of attending the sexiest, sluttiest, most incomparably fantastic and gorgeous evening to ever grace East Brunswick. It was Lap Dance 4 Trans Rights… ie. a community fundraiser held in a tiny, dark, dusty sandwich shop backroom, where lap dances from Melbourne’s most dumbfoundingly hot dancers were auctioned off to save trans lives. Dancers crawled over three sets of legs and stripped in front of gobsmacked, worshipping audiences, who made it rain and rain and rain. Not a single lap dance sold for under $1000. Lap Dance 4 Trans Rights raised $12,500 in five hours. I spoke with its organiser, Ripley Kavara, about it all.
It’s that time of the week… again. This week, we recommend Searching for Meg White, by Melissa Giannini, for ELLE. It’s about the famously reclusive Meg White of the White Stripes, the band which defined an entire era, and brought rock music into the realm of twee and indie sleaze. The author, after pursuing the drummer for years, asks the eternal question: if Men on the Internet could shut the fuck up, might the White Stripes still be making music?[ here ]
THUNDERCAT X CHATGPT = :-(
PHOTO BY RICH FURY (VIA GETTY)
This week in owning the cultural temperature Julie Fenwick of VICE Australia asked, shall we fold ChatGPT in? How bad could it go, really? She allowed the little AI to write her questions for Thundercat, and the results were… interesting. Before we discuss whether AI is gonna take all our jobs and take over the world we should probably ask whether it is capable of not being an absolute freak. Or, in Thundercat’s words, “psychopathic”.[ here ]
WEEKEND GUIDE RECOMMENDATION
RISING is here. Melbourne's winter arts festival has returned for another year. There's a bunch of good shit on. Almost too much.
Our pick? BLACK MASS. Curated by DJ PGZ, the lineup includes Toronto based Bambii, as well as DJ, producer, radio host and Yuggera woman dameeeela, Ngarrindjeri, Ramindjeri and Walkandi–Woni musician and DJ, SOVBLKPSSY, and Crybaby. There will also be an undoubtedly stunning and vulnerable contemporary work from Melbourne performer The Mind Searcher.
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It's gonna be excellent. As PGZ told Aleks Bliszczyk, “Expect music that comes from a place of Black thought, Black expression, Black art, Black struggle, Black vision."See you there.[ here ]
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