#229 – Your Favourite Bar

You probably think your favourite bar is too well hidden, too small and contains too many bearded patrons to ever appear on the bogan’s colonisation radar. An oasis of reason amid an ever expanding desert of bogan-inflicted chaos, your favourite bar is one of few remaining places with immunity to the boganic plague. Run by an owner-operator, it might host some low key live tunes, and is probably even within walking distance of your house. There is no dress code. There are no commercial remixes. No one ever tries to fight you. It’s never too full. There is no ‘list’. And there is never a line to get in.

But be warned. The bogan is coming. Once content with mass glassings and gropings to a top 40 remix soundtrack at high capacity beer barns located on major arterial roads and shopping strips, the bogan now has an inkling that it is missing out on something. Like a child coveting the toy that the other kid has because the other kid has it, the bogan wants to take your favourite bar from you not because it really wants it, but because it doesn’t want you to have it.

The bogan will learn of your favourite bar when the trashmedia report that an actor from Underbelly went there once. Like a moth to your computer screen in a dark room, the bogan will not be able to resist but get in your way. When the invasion begins, you will at first passively resist. If you just ignore them, they’ll have no reason to bother you, and they will soon realise that it’s not their scene, you will think to yourself.

But things will soon begin to change. Despite the bar’s stunning variety of local and imported beers, Corona and Becks will dominate sales, along with any kind of explosive beverage. Orange-skinned femme-bogues will start dancing in the middle of the place, even though there is no dancefloor and it’s never really been a place where people dance. They will then get bored and complain loudly that they’ve “never heard this song before. Play some Kings of Leon!’ Drinks will cost more after bashings and glassings see the bar attain ‘high-risk’ status leading to higher liquor licensing fees, and bogans are willing to pay for more for far inferior drinks. Finally, your favourite bar will be purchased by a football player, or Woolworths, and turned into a pizza bar.

Game Over.

PS: Check out last week’s post at Macrobusiness, which we forgot to link to last week…

A public appeal to Richard Wilkins

We, the writers of the popular website and book Things Bogans Like have announced today that we have forgiven Richard Wilkins. In our recently released book (featuring Richard on the cover), we have variously accused Wilkins of hijacking telethons, hijacking red carpet specials, being outflanked by Max Markson as the ideal celebrity conduit for bogans, and being a polymer that doesn’t actually exist. Other allegations that have been swirling in recent months include the theory that Richard Wilkins’ soul is trapped inside the hologram installed in every Power Balance Band that is sold to bogans with the promise of a 500% increase in power and agility.

Despite the grave nature of the abovementioned accusations, we at Things Bogans Like hereby vow to forgive Richard, for he is just a Kiwi who inadvertently got sucked into the bogan celebrity maelstrom. As of today, Things Bogans Like will not speculate on Richard’s possible involvement in Paul Hogan’s taxation fraud, global warming, or Karl Stefanovic’s continued presence on Australian television screens. The authors have seen the light, and now realise that it’s actually all P!nk’s fault.

P!nk’s newly announced pregnancy (and associated greatest hits album) is of great concern to the future of Australia. If, as is expected, this child is thrust into the entertainment industry, it is feared that it will create a bogan-fuelled dynasty in the Australian entertainment landscape. Another generation of misinformed American celebrities berating Australian farmers, another generation of American celebrities performing 84 nights in a row at Rod Laver Arena, and exporting all of the bogan bucks back to the USA. It must be stopped.

We forgive you, Richard Wilkins. Please team with Things Bogans Like, and use your maxtreme celebrity-herding powers to communicate to Australia’s bogans that sending P!nk’s next album 9 times platinum is not in their long term interests. The future of our children, and our children’s children is at stake.

#185 – History

Today, TBL puts your Bachelor of Bogan education on hold to present this post, which marks a watershed in boganic entertainment.

We’re not talking about the Michael Jackson greatest hits record from his pre-paedophilia period, although there’s little to dislike about that, save for the teeth-grindingly bad duet with Paul McCartney.  No, we’re talking about the other history: that is, things that have already happened.  But the bogan is not excited by the intrigues of the Prussian court. It will not explore the minutiae of Carthaginian naval tactics, nor develop an appreciation for sublime artefacts from the Kingdom of Benin’s golden age. The bogan’s history doesn’t fuck about with such niceties.  The bogan’s history is about blood, guts, massive swords, and glory that lasts throughout the ages. It’s about Spartans with immense rigs, and Vikings with horny helmets. Pirate wenches with busts so heaving, the turbulent seas get jealous. History that’s pissed off, soaked in blood, and coming at you like a cavalry charge, making your heart pump like five cans of Steven Segal’s Lightning Bolt. History to the absolute outer limits of maxtreme.

Following in the fine French tradition of getting bogans so excited they simultaneously lose control of their bladders and their wallets, Gallic bogan-baiter Robert Hossein is on a winner with Ben Hur – the Stadium Spectacular. Clearly bigger than all previous incarnations of itself, this incredible stadium adaption of the historically woeful but completely thrilling Hollywood epic starring Charlton Heston, is soon to explode into Sydney’s ANZ Stadium like a 200 megaton, bogan-homing warhead. According to the website, it “combines the scale of the Sydney Olympic Games Opening Ceremony with the drama of the slave who dared defy the Roman Empire”. This high octane gonad-history thrill ride will feature narration by Russell Crowe, a Roman galleon and a 32-chariot race, fulfilling the history quota, but remaining suitably reminiscent of Easternats, with a slightly higher possibility of violent rioting and the rim-looting hijinks. To TBL’s eternal glee, orange TV personality Richard Wilkins also appears to be spruiking this.

Bogans are taunted by the website that it is for two nights only, and have arranged exclusive presale tickets to avoid missing out, but chances are this thing will be bum-rushed by so many bogans that the organisers will fear a bogan revolt, and promise to extend the run until it rivals P!nk’s latest marathon tour of Australian scout halls. For when the bogan can get his history served up with enormous explosions, megalitres of blood and huge guns, when he can watch chariots with spinning blades on their rims doing massive burnouts LIVE ON STAGE, all whilst drinking overpriced mid-strength beer out of a plastic cup, the bogan is a slavering demon for history.

#162 – Footpaths Outside Nightclubs

The bogan’s love of sick clubs is well documented. As the previous findings of this boganomic think tank have indicated, many things that the bogan likes can be found at the club – remixes, pre-mixes, hot Asian chicks and last year’s designer drug, to name but a few. But, observe a bogan on a night out and you will notice something that at first seems hard to explain; the amount of time the bogan actually spends in nightclubs pales in comparison to the amount of time it spends on footpaths outside nightclubs. It seems that the bogan has developed an unparalleled array of reasons that require it to be near the club, but not in it.

Even though the bogan is an avowed enemy of queue jumpers trying to get into Sydney’s western suburbs to take its jobs, women and liberty, the bogan is an avowed jumper of queues getting into clubs. It all starts with the bogan waddling along the footpath as it inches closer to the velvet rope of hope. Upon gaining entry, the bogan tends to remain in the club just long enough to consume a jager bomb and threaten to glass a cunt, before beginning to question whether maybe the chicks are hotter, the beats sicker and the drinks more explosive at another club. Constantly plagued by the thought that the glass may be greener somewhere else, the bogan fears that it is not having the most maxtreme time possible.

Off to the next club, and after more waiting on the footpath to get in, the bogan enters briefly before re-emerging shortly after to have a smoke, which it only does when clubbing. Soon after re-entry, the bogan again finds itself heading back out to the footpath, this time to punch on.  Like an irritating housecat yowling at the back door, when it’s inside it wants to be outside, but upon going outside it soon wants back in. The cycle continues through the night with perplexing regularity. Another few jager bombs inside and some casual groping sees the bogan escorted from the premises, back onto the footpath outside, where it spends yet more time arguing with bouncers, threatening passersby and, eventually, vomiting.

Bogan Bribe Watch – July 9th

Who’s running the asylum?

The bogan loves a workplace prank, particularly when it’s perpetrated against a new employee who lacks the clout to provide the bogan with an adequate dosage of its own medicine. If the prank turns out to be poorly conceived or injurious, the bogan will tremulously yowl that its brilliant sense of humour was misinterpreted, and that the bogan itself is the true victim. This has proven to be a surprisingly effective method of simultaneously bullying and blame-shifting, and one that Xanana Gusmao has been on the receiving end of this week.

On behalf of the bogan, Julia Gillard has attempted to outflank Tony Abbott, man of ACTION, by picking on the undersized eight year old kid who lives over the back fence. Little Timor isn’t much good at English, he doesn’t have many tough mates, is flat broke, and is hence seen by the bogan as the ideal dumping ground for problems that the bogan wishes it didn’t have.  After numerous seconds of contemplation, it would seem that Gillard has concluded that trampling the sovereignty of weaker nations is an acceptable byproduct of soothing the bogan on the matter of immigration. With recent GPS measurements indicating that Australia’s tectonic plate is moving north at 67mm per year, the spatially intuitive bogan is becoming particularly anxious. Things that the bogan does not want in its backyard are switching from NIMBY to IMBY, and Australia’s failure to halt this lithospheric trend is believed to have cost former Defence Minister John Faulkner his job in early July.

While Gillard’s vow to “relentlessly” pursue the creation of a regional refugee processing centre has been carried abundantly in the media in order to soothe the bogan, neither East Timor’s President nor Prime Minister have committed themselves to the idea, with the Timorese Deputy PM declaring Gillard’s unilateral whiplomacy to be “very unlikely” to ever happen. With Tony Abbott presently stripping down to his Speedos, Labor knows it has mere days to concoct a refugee policy with as much maxtremity at Abbott’s plan to swim out to Ashmore Reef and revive the amateur boxing career of his youth. Circling news helicopters will deliver the bogan real time HD footage of the Opposition Leader surging out of the waves to administer an old fashioned ACTION beating to those who neither grew here NOR flew here.

Prime Minister Gillard has declared that Australia is “better than” the hotly contested race to the bottom that the bogan is currently commissioning on asylum seeker policy. However, her proposal to revive many of the structural elements of the Howard Government’s earlier efforts on the issue is an admission that she does not think she can induce the bogan to be better than much at all. There’s an election to win.

#154 – Coloured Ribbons

After an international disaster affecting English-speaking people, or during a period when a particularly debilitating illness gets the attention of the media, the bogan feels that it is incumbent upon it to solve the problem. But even entities as maxtreme as the bogan can feel impotent in the face of virulent disease or natural catastrophes. Thousands dead or dying, heads of state solemnly offering their eight-second soundbytes so bogans know they care; it’s all too big.

First, after discounting travelling to the country where the disease is rife/disaster has occurred when it realises that it cannot locate it on a map or fly via Virgin or Jetstar, it considers donating money. Being unfamiliar with charities, and not being aware of any telethon or charity concert providing a convenient phone number via which to pledge to celebrities, it discards that notion too. It then gives up on the idea that it can help. The problem is just too big.

Two days later at the shops it spies, on the counter, The Solution. Joy swells up in its heart and tears well in its eyes as it reaches down and collects The Solution. It buys a coloured ribbon.

Having seen celebrities wearing these things during the Logies broadcast, it knows they work. Now, on the long walk from the car park to whichever shop it is attending, or at the workplace or schoolyard, the bogan can now loudly – and brightly – advertise just how much of a humanitarian it really is. It cares about poor people in other countries. To the tune of a $3.50 fashion accessory.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before the bogan – in particular the male bogan – decided that pinning a colourful ribbon looks a bit lame on a day-to-day basis. A solution needed to be found, and found it was. Coloured wristbands.

Celebritised by ultramegasuperbogan icon Chris Martin, these brightly coloured demonstrations of magnanimity have at least ten billion times more bogan cachet than ribbons. They have space to actually print the name of the charity on the bogan’s wrist, they sit on a place that the bogan can cover with a sleeve if they feel self-conscious and they are worn by a celebrity in places other than red carpets.

Today, the observant bogologist will see that pink is the ribbon/wristband of choice for the discerning bogan. The bogan realised it could be humanitarian and generous, yet still buy Australian. The female bogan will fight against breast cancer to the death – it needs them to retain the attention of its mate. The male bogan just digs massive cans.

#141 – Suiting Up

On the surface, much of the male bogan’s behaviour portrays a deep resentment of ‘intellectuals’, ‘elitists’, and successful people who are not celebrities or lottery winners. But this is merely a manifestation of what is arguably its greatest fear: being left out. Indeed, the bogan male aspires to a sophisticated life among high society, being in the know about get rich quick schemes, and dalliances with corporate lawyer-cum-lingerie models.

But, lacking the required self-discipline and rigour to achieve genuine success, it resorts to trying to convince itself that it is a part of elite society by ‘suiting up’ once in a while for a major event such as the Melbourne Cup, a wedding or its little sister’s deb ball. This also allows the bogan the opportunity to do two things it likes very much: pretend it is a celebrity at a red carpet event; and use the phrase ‘suit up’.

Men’s formal wear is traditionally worn in a conservative, understated fashion, seeking to subtly connote traits such as respect, confidence and power. But that stuff is for poofs. The bogan is not conservative or understated, and seeks to convey an image of maxtreme human billboard branding at all times. As Armani is yet to produce a suit conspicuously splashed with logos and bogan slogans, the bogan male has had to find other ways to signpost its alpha-consumer status when suiting up.

The bogan believes that it must wear the most conspicuous version of what everyone else is wearing. If everyone is wearing Ray Bans, it must have fluorescent yellow Ray Bans, if everyone has Dunlop Volleys, it must have Australian flag-decorated Volleys with fluorescent yellow laces. This has led to the bogan remixing its formal attire into an eye-jarringly garish combination of garments consisting of: black suit, black shirt, white “crocodile skin” shoes, shiny silver tie, topped off by an enormous pair of European designer sunglasses. Of course, the occasional bogan is a cunning creature, and the possibilities are nearly limitless, including brightly coloured suits, suits with numbers on them, or suits that appear paint-splashed. The end result is an awkwardly clad creature that looks somewhere between a confused penguin and an ill-assembled piano.

At the conclusion of a night’s formal festivities, the piano-penguin bogan male has lured a shiny orange female bogan, shoes in hand, back to its lair. He is horrified when she asks him to suit up.

#134 – Pre-Mixed Drinks

The bogan’s love for shortcuts has been covered in reasonable sufficiency. What has not been talked about however is its curious love for overpriced saccharine poison, known as the alcopop. Notwithstanding the painfully unimaginative portmanteau, producers and marketers of this piss have profited immensely from the bogan’s love of convenience and fully integrated branding. The very words “Ready-to-drink” make its heart palpitate furiously, like a hipster about to watch a cardigan-clad Zooey Deschanel perform a duet with Tom Waits in front of a small organic farmers’ market.

Knowing the bogan’s helpless malleability to televisual stimuli, it comes as no surprise that premixed drinks are one of the most heavily advertised alcoholic products in the country. Combining a vertigo-inducing array of cross promotional advertising between various paragons of boganic activity at sick clubs, the premixed drink is literally* the alcoholic equivalent of a Lynx can.

Allegedly premium Swedish vodka brand Absolut has, in true bogan-baiting form, taken their communication strategy to the maxtreme. In a display of absolut genius, in 2005 they introduced a slender, translucent bottle of Absolut vodka and a citrus mixer, branded it “CUT”. They employed the services of Maxxium Australia to distribute their swill and had the lovely folk at Naked Communications handle their advertising. This convergence of maximum nudity rocked the bogan’s tectonic plates, causing an eruption of of bogan dollars of Eyjafjallajökull-ian proportions. It could now be seen drinking Absolut Cut Lemon in Cut branded bars, wearing the free promotional Cut rubber wristband and talking about how it would like to cut up the cunt that rubbed up against its missus.

Such is the bogan’s love for the RTD that not even the application of a 70% tax served to meaningfully impede its predilection for ripping bulk piss in this form. Ignoring the fact that a 330ml bottle of watermelon flavoured Bacardi Breezer now costs about the same as 330ml of straight Bacardi rum, it will gravitate towards the pretty red coloured bottle like tinea to unwashed feet. The bogan is always ready to drink, and it likes its liquor and sugarwater to be the exact same way.

Whilst the bogan’s behaviour may seem erratic and purposeless, rest assured that it is not. Aware of the horror of an evening without premixes and remixes, the bogan will not stray far from venues that provide heady amounts of both of these things. The introduction of premixed cocktails was the next logical step towards capturing a larger share of the bogan’s nocturnal leisure dollar. Now, young femmebogues can make gut-wrenching jokes about sucking off cowboys. Its premixed innuendo repertoire thus depleted, it will switch to innovative quips about having sex on a beach or brandishing a slippery nipple.

#133 – Celebrities’ Opinions

As has been discussed at length in this convenient hutch of boganic knowledge, the Bogan likes to have an opinion. But the process of careful aggregation and analysis of the available data, or long sessions spent staring deep into the inky, abstract ether, takes too long in delivering the simple and concrete answers the Bogan requires immediately.  As a result, the Bogan will leave as many stones unturned as possible in seeking out the most convenient shortcut to forming its opinion. The opinions of celebrities are heartily embraced by bogans for this very reason. The bogan believes celebrities embody all that is perfect and unattainable in the temporal realm, so it makes itself a willing vessel for their vacuous musings, which are made readily available to the bogan through the ever-expanding, life giving tentacles of the malevolent trashmedia.

If there’s something that excites a bogan even more than an unqualified celebrity’s worthless opinion, it’s an unqualified celebrity’s worthless opinion on a worthless topic.  This is why there were high fives aplenty in the office the day some callous arsehole invented Bert Newton’s 20 to One. A low-balling festival of yawn, this show features unremarkable people discussing banal, pathetic and advertiser-friendly topics such as “Worst Haircuts”, “Greatest Logies Moments”, and “Hilarious Celebrity Blunders”. Obviously this show is a TV producer’s wet dream. Not only does it mainly consist of outtakes and archival footage, but it allows Bert Newton, perennial recipient of an honorary toupee gag at every ‘TV Event’, to be wheeled out again as an example of just how truly embarrassing this country’s entertainment industry is. Celebrity opinion on this rotisserie of shit is provided by a revolving cast of desperate ex-soap stars and reality TV also-rans. And Richard Wilkins.

The bogan, true to form, laps it up like a dog does its own sick. Situated not far from the oft-spatulated base of the TV barrel, somewhere in between Hey Hey it’s Saturday and TV shows made up of the most popular things on YouTube the previous week, this sort of show used to be served up in the form of once-off outtakes and bloopers specials, whenever there was a hole in a network’s programming that needed to be filled as cheaply as possible.  The bogan liked these, and wanted more of them. So in the ever-changing, never amazing world of network TV, where the bogan dollar is king, the bogan can now rely on this torrent of televisual smegma every week.

#130 – Celebrity Fragrances

Celebrities are better than the rest of us in every way. The bogan understands this in an intuitive, unassailable manner that many of us are simply not equipped to embrace fully. For decades now, the bogan has been striving to look, act and sound as much like a celebrity – either an actual celebrity or a generic notion of one – that there really were few places left to go. It now wants to smell like one.

But just what does a celebrity smell like? This is a mystery as most bogans’ interaction with actual famous people extends no further than the television, radio or trash mag. Luckily, there are celebrities at hand just waiting to tell the bogan exactly how it smells! And first to the post was ultra-mega-super-x-treme bogan icon Britney Spears.

She first released ‘Curious’, and the bogan, who responded to the name by inquiring fervently at the fragrance counter at Myer after it, wound up slathering itself in ‘Curious’ for a solid year after it received a bright pink bottle of the stuff from its hulking life partner for Christmas. Unfortunately, Britney then just managed to confuse the bogan. Over subsequent Yules (the bogan is most interested in smelling like celebrities in December, it seems) Britney released ‘Fantasy’, ‘In Control’ and ‘Believe’. It’s Curious that the bogan never realised that it’s a Fantasy to Believe that Britney was ever In Control of her odour.

The bogan, who at no point questioned the fact that the stuff these bottles emitted smelt something like a lactating salamander, was dismayed at the array of smells Britney was throwing its way. What did she really smell like? This anti-existential pain caused the bogan to look further afield.

Thankfully, there was no shortage of other celebrities the bogan could now opt to smell like. Gwyneth Paltrow (‘Pure White Linen Light Breeze’, ‘Pleasures’, ‘Pleasures Delights’), J.Lo (‘JLo Glow’, ‘Still’, ‘Miami Glow’, ‘Love at First Glow’, ‘Live’, ‘Live Luxe’, ‘Glow After Dark’, ‘Deseo’, ‘Deseo Forever’, ‘Live Platinum’, ‘Sunkissed Glow’),  Christina Aguilera (‘Xpose’, ‘Christina Aguilera by Christina Aguilera’, ‘Inspire’, ‘Christina Aguilera: By Night’) and of course, Paris Hilton (‘Just Me’, ‘Heiress’, ‘Can Can’, ‘Fairy Dust’, ‘Siren’), Katie ‘Jordan’ Price (‘Stunning’, ‘Besotted’) and Kim Kardashian (‘Voluptuous’) all offered the bogan sufficient dubious connections to the world of celebrity, while smelling suspiciously like balsamic vinegar.

The male bogan, having blindly purchased the required stink for whichever appropriate female bogan it is pursuing, realises that the fierce musk its target now reeks of acts as an effective negating agent of the Lynx Effect. The bogan laments.

NOTE: Yes, we know this was the perfect time for a Carl Williams-oriented post, but we feel we said enough here. TBL