January 20, 2019
I have a confession to make.
It’s midnight, approximately 10 hours and 10 minutes before this weekly ritual is meant to hit your inboxes. I’ve been at the tennis. I’ve been drinking. And I still don’t know how I feel about that Gillette ad.
I was hoping that the panic of the deadline would force me into some kind of stance on the issue.
In an effort to “unpack” this beast (a phrase right up there with “action” and “deep dive” in adland’s Bullshit Bingo), I sought out male company today.
So I found myself sitting at lunch with Jules Lund - which consisted of the most Melbourne meal to ever be forced into existence: toasted bread, a half avocado, a slab of feta cheese and a sprinkle of spices, all so perfectly separated that you actually had to construct it yourself. In the words of Mr Lund, I am “the worst orderer on the planet”. He says so with good reason. Last time we were together was the morning after the night before.
I’d been attacked in a taxi eight hours prior. I’d shown up to breakfast in Bondi and given him no indication that I was not okay (except, perhaps, my atrocious appearance, but thus far, he has been kind enough not to comment on the disaster that would have been how I presented myself that morning). On that fateful Wednesday, I ordered what can only be described as a bowl of coconut goop. I was not hungry. I panicked. In my post-traumatic morning haze I couldn’t order bacon (too heavy), or eggs (too eggy), or anything normal (menus are scary), so I pretended I wanted to be healthy, and coconut goop it was. This goop never ended. No matter how much I scooped at it, more appeared. It was like some sick Willy Wonka-esque joke. There was nothing I could do to defeat it. Jules had no idea what was going on my brain (he probably never does), and just watched in bewildered fascination as I prattled on about coconut goop, and how much I wished paramedics were given a better deal (a side issue I’ll talk to you about at some other point).
