#34 – Sexpo

Once a year, all of the bogan’s tawdry sexual fantasies come to bear under one large corrugated roof. Deviously marketed as an exhibition focusing on all aspects of health and sexuality, Sexpo is but a filthy menagerie of sweat, failed dreams, washed up porn stars and overpriced dildos. Nursing love-toy sample bags and blank faces, the bogans patiently peruse everything; from stalls hawking the latest in pleasure-inducing gadgetry to Miss Nude Australia presiding over two men simulating sexual positions from the Kama Sutra on a blow-up doll. Languidly strolling past the gaudy bazaar of g-strings, giggles, porn mags, peepshows and motorised parachute rides, the bogan’s mind is briefly distracted by the sudden appearance of a man dressed as a giant penis handing out lube and condoms.

Not to be left out of the action, the female bogan will enthusiastically participate in the “Fake An Orgasm” competition or take pole dancing lessons or bare all in the Amateur Strip Show, all the while being cajoled by the aural charms of timeless bogan, Russell Gilbert. This further gives the bogan an opportunity to attempt to temporarily apply the ADHD ethos of pornography to its own sex life. By interacting with B-grade porn stars and obtaining a signed copy of Monica Mayhem’s Anal Episodes 9: The Ploughing at Bathurst, it satisfies its need to immerse itself in the seedy, illicit underground of hard-core erotica.

Of course, no bogan event is complete without the gratuitous burning of massive amounts of fossil fuels. Enter the group of daredevil freestyle motorcyclists who call themselves the Crusty Demons. The ability to jump repeatedly over mounds of sand on a 250cc dirt bike while performing strange tricks renders the bogans gasping in amazement, as it vicariously taps into the bone-chilling, high-octane excitement. Once it has collected a sufficient number of free samples, it will make one last round of the garish collection of adult products that can be found at any suburban Club X store before making its way home to ferociously masturbate.

#33 – The Australian Victory at Gallipoli

Once a year, on Anzac Day, April 25, hundreds of thousands of dedicated, patriotic Australians gather at solemn places of remembrance. Silence is observed, private thoughts are conducted, and The Last Post is played, eerily, by a lone bugler into the crisp morning air as the sun rises over what would otherwise be an innocuous Australian morning. Many of these noble souls are there to recognize the sacrifices of Australian service men and women over the years. Others are there to recognize the day we handed it to the Turks.

The battle of Gallipoli is celebrated by bogans across the land as one of, if not THE greatest military victory in our nation’s history. In one day – April 25 – Australian soldiers stormed the beaches at a heretofore little-known Turkish peninsula, and, without the assistance of any other soldiers from any other countries, proceeded to take significant chunks of enemy-held territory. Yes, there were significant casualties, but this merely enhances the ANZAC legend. Australians, and possibly some New Zealanders, fought hard, and proved to the rest of our WWII allies just how incredibly awesome we are at the business of making war.

However, these observances that take place on Anzac Day, recognizing such a stunning military victory, have bred an even greater act of memorialization. Today, bogans consider it something of a pilgrimage, a Hajj, if you will, to venture across the seas to these foreign shores, and to stand on the soil that their brethren fought, died, and kicked arse on. They awake, early on a Turkish spring morning, stand in silent recognition, as the Turks cede their own sacred land to the bogans’ desire for national pride, and listen to the Last Post. They then eat lunch, sink some piss, leave the rubbish, and go looking for some local tail. In pursuit of the new, 21st century, Australian military victory.

#32 – Glamour Photography

The bogan does not cope well with the ageing process. Gradually increasing feelings of insecurity resulting from expanding waistlines, sagging skin, crows’ feet and receding hairlines has led to burgeoning industries selling solutions to worried bogans past their primes. Some are long-standing, such as skin care. However, there has been constant development, the most prominent being explosive growth in hair regeneration technology. With that came the exorbitant charges associated with regular visits to the ‘clinician’ by paunchy men, approaching their forties, yet still bearing the pastel t-shirts and oversized, yet formless biceps of their youth. These men can be easily identified, incidentally, by their still-vertical hair failing to conceal the increasing bare acreage on their scone. 

However, there are few markets left for these mid-90s hope-peddlers to crack. So new feel-good products have risen to prominence. While some have been more successful, none are as bile-inducingly horrid as glamour photography. Today, in a world where celebrities are photographed relentlessly, it stands to reason to the bogan that they, too deserve to be photographed. Semi nude. In their forties. Then hang the results in the entrance hall to their house. Where their children’s friends can see. 

Even better, the bogan can experience a small slice of the sheer, face-melting awesomeness of celebrity; the photo can be taken in soft, caressing light. The outfit can be revealing – but not TOO revealing. And the end result can be airbrushed to within an inch of its life. Like the young lady on the cover of their partner’s issue of Ralph, of whom the bogan is furiously jealous, blemishes and signs of any actual ageing can be removed. The picture can then be placed, at superhuman speed, as the bogan’s new Facebook profile pic.

The photo can then be hung in a highly public place – not only the entrance hall, but above the bed, or in the kitchen. Because the bogan knows there is nothing that guests want to see more during dinner than their 45 year-old hostess leaning seductively over their plate of beef and black bean.

#31 – Couture

The term “haute couture” is French for “high sewing”, and has for 150 years referred to exclusive tailored Parisian clothing. Somewhere along the line, the abbreviated version of the term gained favour, with “couture” custom-fitted clothing being produced in fashion capitals such as New York, Milan, London, and Tokyo. Recently, the bogan has become aware of the prestige cachet of couture, and it wants in.

A decade ago, some forward-thinking clothing companies identified the ability of the couture concept to fleece buckets of cash out of the bogan female who wanted to feel an affiliation with high fashion. In order to neatly package the idea for the bogan though, there needed to be an anglicising “zazzing up” of the term, similar to the “All Berry Blast” beverage at Boost Juice. Ironically, the first major example that appeared was “Juicy Couture”, an American label that sold mass-produced velour tracksuits at department stores. The “couture” term allowed an astounding price premium to be applied, and the endorsement of Madonna cemented the brand at the top of the new female bogan “want” list.

The cat was out of the bag; the new way to double the amount that a bogan was willing to pay for clothing was to incorporate the C word into the brand name, and the potential to pitch to the bogan male also became apparent. The actual meaning of the term had been completely lost by this point, and the bogan just interpreted it to mean “fancy”. The increasingly chronic boganisation of the term has continued through to the present day. Low quality “fight branded” clothing for bogan thugs now even contains the word “couture” plastered across it (in reference to a wrestler), in a font that makes them feel like they have Ben Cousins’ Ned Kelly slogan tattoo across their stomachs.

At this point, the bogan male is able to enter the nightclub in his “XTREME COUTURE” gear, which eloquently portrays his nuanced understanding of his embodiment of not only brutal power, but the refinement of 19th century bespoke Parisian tailoring.

#30 – Fad Diets

While many bogans – usually the male ones – are busy getting huge at the gym, there are many more, of all stripes, getting huge by other means. Prominent among these are bogan standards like late-night McDonalds and KFC. However, there has been a shift underway in the bogan mindset.

Some time ago, the bogan became aware of the benefits of appearing healthy (this is distinct, it bears mentioning, from actually being healthy). This is because an aesthetically pleasing bogan is better positioned to be photographed in those unusual middle sections of the street presses whereby young bogans pose lasciviously in front of a stranger’s camera at the club, often 6 jagerbombs into a 12 jagerbomb night.

The result of this change first manifested itself in stating loudly and publicly that they were ‘watching their weight’. However, this had little to do with actually wanting to eat less-delicious foods. The response was nigh-on instant. McDonalds started a ’salads’ range, with sufficient dressing as to make it resistant to ordinary forms of biodegradation. And Subway emerged, with footlong (this is not just a marketing term) sandwiches, boasting “six grams of fat”. What remained unmentioned was that the six gram option was a half-sized sandwich, with wholemeal bread, no meat, no cheese, no sauce, and no taste. Naturally, the bogan proceeded to order the footlong meatball (double meat) with tasty cheese, BBQ sauce and pickles, then sat down to enjoy their healthy lunch.

The ensuing weight gain created significant consternation for bogans nationwide. Why was their new diet not successful? Why did they continue to register a BMI of 32? There were clearly only two options. For male bogans, it was that they obviously boasted a higher-than-normal muscle mass, a conclusion reached after learning that professional athletes often had higher-than-normal BMI readings. Female bogans, on the other hand, decided that they had malfunctioning lymph nodes. Or something similarly medicine-y sounding.

As a result, male bogans did nothing. Female bogans, with eyes fixed firmly on the prize, took to ‘dieting’. For years, carbs were the enemy. The Atkins diet, which, not incidentally, advocated the massive consumption of fats in order to get thin, failed. Because it failed to deal with the bogans’ poor metabolism and/or lymph glands (or whatever. Maybe thyroids? The bogan can’t really remember). So, suddenly, the diet market was awash with shakes. Sure Slim, Celebrity Slim and Tony Ferguson all promoted themselves as being able to reduce the collective bogan weight by a noteworthy proportion.

So bogans began drinking shakes. With their Subway and Maccas salads.

#29 – 3-Park Superpass!

The Islamic faith has Mecca, the Catholics have the Vatican City, and the fashion world has Milan. Bogan culture, too, has its own site of pilgrimage – a fountain of Boganic purity, gushing forth in plenty all that is Boganesque – that place is Queensland’s Gold Coast. On the Gold Coast, not so much a city as a holiday resort-cum-shopping-mall-cum-vertical retirement village, no sites are more sacred than that juggernaut of Bogan fun-in-the-sun, Movie World, Sea World and Wet’n'Wild, all covered under the extravagantly priced Three Park Superpass*. According to the operator, these theme parks are “a thrill-seekers (sic) paradise”, leading us to conclude that thrill seeker (Bogan) heaven involves some combination of getting sunburnt, being ripped off, thrashing your children in public, waiting in queues and having a chuck from a moving vehicle. Let’s break this down.

Warner Bros. Movie World:

Movie World touts itself as “Hollywood on the Gold Coast”, but it differs from the real Hollywood in that no movies have actually ever been made there. It is a reproduction of the soulless artifice Hollywood is famous for, sans any actual motion picture production; a testament to the cynical genius of marketers as much as it is to the Bogan’s slack-jawed susceptibility to their ruses, Movie World’s success lies in combining everything about mass culture which provides such enduring comfort to the Bogan, stripping it of any remaining content, and turning it into an extreme, bowel-loosening thrill ride experience. The Bogan loves Movie World because the rides vaguely remind it of a film it once saw cross-marketed on a Happy Meal, but at that point the Bogan stops thinking about it, because everything’s going really really fast.

Sea World:

Sea World, much like that other Queensland nature abomination, Australia Zoo, seems on the surface to be highly educational, but do not be fooled. You will not learn anything about marine life on Bert and Ernie’s Island Holiday, or the amazing Jet Rescue Ride, where somehow you can save a sea lion by riding a jet ski, instead of destroying its habitat and disfiguring its progeny, which is what you’d expect to happen. Sea World is truly a magical place where our natural environment meets high-octane fun, and is summarily ground into extinction.

Wet ‘n’ Wild:

Seeing as there is no discernable difference between this place and Sea World (apart from the dolphins in the pool having been replaced by yet more dickheads,) there is nothing further to add.

* As much out of malice as commercial imperative, the equally dumb and crass Dreamworld has been excluded from the Superpass, although the Bogan may not know this at the time of impulse purchase, allowing the Bogan to wait in yet another endless queue to lodge an irrational complaint.

#28 – “Holdens”

Not to be confused with the Chav, the bogan’s British cousin, the new bogan male now wants to be a Chev. This utterly confusing phenomenon involves the removal the Holden badging from a Monaro or SS Commodore, replacing them with badges from a bankrupt American company. While the bogan will sometimes profess a desire to visit the vacuous crassness that is Las Vegas, it has generally been unfashionable during the last decade for the aspirational Aussie bogan to be overtly pro-American. Except on his Australian car.

The entire Holden Commodore range is designed in Australia, and built in Australia. The Australian operation designs and builds an engine that is exported to numerous other countries in which its parent company operates. In the same manner, some Holden cars in Australia use a V8 engine originally designed overseas by General Motors, and also used in Hummer, Buick, Chevrolet, Saab, Vauxhaul, Pontiac, Cadillac, and GMC vehicles. The bogan has a fundamental craving to be seen as tough, and somewhere along the line he incorrectly decided that the V8 engine in his car is a Chevrolet. Making the entire vehicle, by rational extension, actually a Chevrolet. The bogan is seemingly ashamed to drive Australian. This logic flaw is not applied to the VL Commodore from the late 80s, which used a Nissan engine. Because Japanese people aren’t tough, and the bogan needs to be tough.

The term “The Stranger” was coined for the process of sitting on one’s hand until it goes numb, and then browsing pornography. The lack of sensation in the hand simulates the experience of receiving manual assistance from someone else. In the same way, the bogan will drink locally brewed, foreign label beer until its brain goes numb. It will then disregard its otherwise rampant Australian nationalism, enthusiastically ripping the Holden badges off its car, and replacing them with a set of Chevy logos. With its car suitably enhanced, the bogan endlessly prowls the roads of nightclub districts, attempting to trick similarly uninformed bogan females into believing that he is an exotic lothario; a rare and irresistible sexual force from across the seas. All too often, the evening ends with the bogan covertly performing The Stranger on itself in a nearby carpark.

Bonus Post – Things Bogans Will Like

The select club of refined gentlemen behind Things Bogans Like bring to you a new message: the 8 things bogans WILL like, but don’t yet realise they’ll like. Compiled from many hours of inner-urban research at venues that the bogan is not currently familiar with, the list reveals the trends that bogans will embrace in the near future, and completely ruin.

Twitter

In the past 18 months, the new bogan has belatedly made the switch from MySpace to Facebook as its social networking website of choice. This has caused trendsetters to start making the switch from Facebook over to Twitter. Once the bogan realises that there are celebrities on Twitter, and that no interaction on there is more than 140 characters in length, it will be unable to resist the appeal of broadcasting its every move to its friends via its phone or computer. Even better, the 140 character limit is something that bogans have been training for for years, via generally unintelligible text message abbreviations. The trendsetters, meanwhile, will migrate elsewhere, galled by the flood of tweeted rubbish that the bogan will bring.

Phở

Now that Contiki is doing trips across Southeast Asia, and Vietnam has become known among the more avant bogans as “Thailand but cheaper”, it’s almost time for the bogan to adopt a Vietnamese dish in the same way that it did for Pad Thai, Butter Chicken, and Beef and Black bean. Pho (which the bogan will mispronounce with a hard P instead of an “F”) is a Vietnamese soup with rice noodles, meat and bean sprouts. Endorsing Pho will allow the bogan to appear worldly, but not TOO worldly.

Fat basketball boots

Inner urban hipsters have been (ironically) getting around in the chunky late 80s/early 90s style basketball boots for a while, and they’re now teetering on the brink of crossing over to the bogan. As was the fashion at the time, these boots are often characterised by their dramatic designs and bright colours, which will be enormously appealing to the bogan’s lack of subtlety and restraint. Some also feature fun gimmicks such as inflatable tongues. The new bogan will soon be willing to pay as much as $250 for shoes of this nature.

Fred Perry polo shirts

The new bogan is on a constant mission to wreck the brand image of every manufacturer of premium polo shirts. In the early years of the current decade, Ralph Lauren saw itself get whisked away into bogan hands, and soon every new bogan was swanning around in one of their polos, collars infuriatingly upturned. This trend lasted for a couple of years, after which the bogan went in search of a new brand to hijack. Temporary dalliances with Lacoste and Nautica did severe damage to both labels, but the new bogan is soon to discover Fred Perry. Fred Perry polo shirts are vintage English tennis gear, quite expensive, and a current staple of the inner-city trendster scene. Once the bogan realises this, there’ll be no turning back.

Bon Iver

Bon Iver ticks all appropriate boxes for receiving massive amounts of bogan love. The band has a second album due sometime in 2010, and while the debut received glowing critical acclaim, it did not create what the bogan can identify as ‘hype’. Bon Iver possesses sufficient sensitivity and clearly identifiable melody to make it appeal to the bogan, while offering significant scope for remixing. Even better, Bon Iver slots fairly neatly into the gentle acoustic milieu of Jose Gonzalez, Jack Johnson, et al, meaning that this particular brand of sensitivity is not for ‘poofs’. Just as Jeff Buckley allowed the bogan to appear emotionally attuned 15 years ago, Bon Iver will now fill the gaping void of accepted gentle male acoustic folk. Bogans will like them.

Gin

The new bogan is soon to grow tired of Jagermeister, along with developing a heart condition from all of the energy drinks used to create Jager Bombs. It will seek solace in Gin, a distinctly British drink that will surf the British fad in the lead-up to the 2012 Olympic Games. The inner-urban elite has been connecting over gin for a few years now, and the bogan will soon embrace the refreshing taste, premix compatibility, alcohol potency, and capacity to be blended with citrus. How well it combines with energy drinks is currently untested, but the recently released lemon flavoured V energy drink is an early bogan contender.

Carbon neutral products

Despite its illustrious history of burning vast amounts of fossil fuel in the name of transportation or leisure, the new bogan is soon to latch onto carbon neutrality for some of its purchases. The female bogan will drive this trend, adopting the increasingly mainstream mantra it is “the right thing to do”. This switch will come about primarily out of a desire to be seen as up to date, rather than from any particular conviction relating to environmentalism or sustainability. The male bogan will follow shortly after, enticed by the prospect of impressing the female’s new value system, and hopeful of bedding her. The bogan will apply the principle of carbon neutrality very inconsistently across its day.

Wayfarer sunglasses

The Blues Brothers is one of those films that it’s OK to like, no matter who you are. But not for long. A couple of years ago, when ultra-cool trendsetters started picking up Jake and Elwood’s ubiquitous sunglasses from op-shops, it spelled trouble. Today, they are issued to every person under the age of 30 who owns a pair of tight jeans and/or has over 10,000 non-remix songs on their iPod – or more appropriately, their Creative Zen. But it is going to be short-lived. Ray Ban has, by making squillions of them and giving them a cool-sounding name, made Wayfarers a prime target for the bogan hordes. They’re cool, they’re expensive, they have brand-recognition cred, and they look great with a flannel shirt and tight pants, the upcoming bogan uniform. Expect to see them at FCUK soon.

Anything else? Suggest them on the new page…

#27 – Rove

The bogan likes to laugh. It also likes to be comfortable in the fact that jokes about farts and dicks and mothers will remain funny for all of eternity. For there is nothing more revolting for the bogan than to be challenged in some cerebral way when it comes humour. Here’s where Rove McManus, the paragon of the “this is bound to make your mum laugh” quip, neatly satisfies satisfied all of the bogan’s comedic needs.

Not only is was Rove armed to the teeth with painfully uninspired jokes, he is was also self-deprecating, had romantic dalliances with starlets from Home and Away and Blue Heelers, and boasts boasted a cousin who played AFL football – all being decisive bogan prerequisites for winning their coveted affection. Realising this sacred (and lucrative) connection to his audience, he never misses missed an opportunity to use his show to shamelessly plug the movies, artists, albums, books and agendas of celebrities he desperately needs needed to come back for another anodyne, often awkward interview. Particularly galling were international guests, who constantly appeared befuddled that this guy managed to get his own TV show. Meanwhile, he remains remained the televisual equivalent of comfort food, which was sad, after his edgy, Channel 31 beginnings. After all, heaven forbid, he alienates his audience, forcing Pink to settle for 20 concerts nationwide instead of 54. Not on Rove’s watch.

Flanked by the affably stout Peter Helliar and a team of mildly entertaining, inoffensive larrikins such as Dave Hughes, Rove Live is was the ideal Sunday night televisual escape for the bogan. With a wonderfully generous interviewing style (read: poorly researched and overtly fawning), Rove never dares dared challenge his guest with anything remotely controversial, but safely steers steered his questions to the thunderous applause of his faithful. Drenched in immaturity, the show annoyingly veers veered between bad timing and awkward delivery while Rove constantly laughs laughed at his own jokes with gay abandon.

Validated by three Gold Logies, the bogan it seems simply can could not get enough of Rove’s unique brand of (un)funniness. Until now. The decision to end the show has, unsurprisingly, caused outrage among bogans. No longer can it while away another Sunday night perched in front of the telly snug in the knowledge that the next hour will be safe and familiar, like ordering lemon chicken from the local Chinese take-away. No more riding dirt bikes with Pink or another episode of Kevin Rudd, P.M. or a giant bowl of smarties. No more silly attempts at “really getting to know the celebrity” with edgy titles such as “Public Probe”. No more relying on Hamish and Andy for ratings. No more Rove. Phew.

#26 – Malapropisms

At some point on the journey from childhood to adulthood, the social power balance shifts. Among 14 year-olds, the superior social animal is the physical specimen: the best looking girl, the top athlete, the guy who manages to combine the boyish good looks of a young Brad Pitt with the unrestrained violence of Mike Tyson. Those whom they lord it over are the nerds. Those who, bereft of the genetic assistance their socially superior peers are blessed with, are forced to adapt to survive. They get smart.

Years later, and the power balance has begun to shift. The physical specimens, lacking the need to cultivate an awareness of life, culture, or basic grammar, have found themselves at a disadvantage in the adult world where brains have suddenly and unexpectedly become paramount. That many of these former jocks and glamours have evolved into today’s bogans is unsurprising. Their response to this social shift, however, is. They fake it. By inserting words that sound similar to something they once overheard on the ABC into ordinary sentences, they believe that they can enhance their social standing.

With hilarious results.

The bogan malapropism has evolved into many variants. First is the effective mispronunciation of a common, and ostensibly appropriate word. Common among these are the two classics “for all intensive purposes” and “please be pacific”. However, these are easily remedied, and display at least a grasp of vocabulary, if not spelling.

One of the classic examples, if not strictly a malapropism, is certainly the most common. It is, literally, the misuse of the word ‘literally’. As in “It was so hot yesterday, I was literally on fire” or “I literally died crossing the road this morning”.

Another is more wonderful. It is the use of words that sound impressive, in the hope of slotting unobtrusively into a sentence. Often incorrect, sometimes they are actually complete antonyms of the intended meaning. For a demonstration, let us look no further than one of the commenters that we have (and dearly love) on Things Bogans Like, ‘Chester Ludlow’, discussing the merits of the site:

“The antithesis of “Stuff White People Like”, only lame.”

The prosecution rests, your honour. Except to close by quoting our very own Hunter McKenzie-Smythe: “It’s the double negative logic loop. He’s trying to double his diss, but unfortunately a byproduct of doing that is that the diss has disastrously collapsed in on itself, resulting in fail.”