Oh Pollys, let me count the ways how i love you. As someone past my ‘Clubbing’ phase, i still enjoy a healthy dose of social intercourse and busting a worm move on the dance floor, and every time a Pollys dance is on, i lay back and think of England .. i also think of a few other things, like .. “I wonder how long i’m going to have to wait till i hear Amarilo?”. I was not disapointed at the August dace, i was ‘Sha la la la lah lah lah lah-ing’ before i knew it.
It truely is the last bastion of frameless queer community in Sydney, a little oasis of a time and era that ddin’t need to end with so much collateral damage. Polly’s maintains that little island where attitude is left at the door, or slapped out of your bottom on the dance floor, imagine a high school formal where someone laced the cordial with LSD, and there was an explosion in an op shop, and make up factory from the 70’s .. that’s the look and feel of Pollys, and i feel perfectly at home.
One last thing, everyone should go just for the drag terrorism, again drag without attitude (Fuck you uppity cruel drag queens, you insult me with your base humour), but a sense of freedom and fun, which is what i thought drag was supposed to be. I was watching the shows from the side of the stage, at one point i could see the audiences eyes widen, smiles plastered across the punters faces, at Pollys that can only mean one thing ‘Drag Malfunction’. Of course we weren’t let down as i looked upon the stage to see a queen cupping her nuts in one hand, whilst ‘Spirit fingering’ with the other. Her gaffer had given way, and she had popped a tossel, all without missing a beat or a spirit finger, now THAT’S a professional.
Lovely Rowena Wallace, ever the staple of Womans Day and New Idea, with her latest brushes with the law, the most up to date movements of her moves to housing commission estates, and now .. plastic surgery. The latest spread details Rowena’s (or Pat The Rat as she’ll forever be known) adventure under the knife, all in the name of glamour, and to give hope to women everywhere in housing commission estates. All they need to do is be contacted by a fan who is a plastic surgeon, and they too can have there upper lids and ‘chooky’ jowls hacked away. It was stressed that the Dr done this for free, however Rowena did appear in magazines and a classic episode of Today Tonight, where in a touching moment she wheeled out her tarnished and dusty gold Logies, which i’m amazed she still has. Hats off to her, you all know my policy on plastic surgery, too much is never ever enough. I cant help but think in the last photo Rowena looks like she’s been squirted in the left eye with a lemon, and she has a semi Elvis snear going on. I don’t know why people do this, i find women so much more attractive and sexy with a bit of life showing on there faces, i can think of two women right off the top of my head who are in their sixties, never been under the knife, and are insanely attractive. They glow when they enter a room, they carry themselves with such kindness and comfort, you don’t even notice or really look at there faces, you just know you’re drawn to them, and you feel better for having spent time with that person.
I remember just before Diana was killed i was sitting in a doctors surgery, and a lady was looking at a ‘New Idea’ magazine and commented out loud ‘Ooh, Diana’s looking old’, i couldn’t help but challenge this old chook, that i thought Diana was so much more attractive at that moment, with life and experience on her face, than she was as a twenty year old bride. Wow .. if only Diana got a chance to live beyond thirty six years old, so young. If you do have to go the knife, then go hard, go full on, because it’s all for “Glory, glamour and gold”.
Ahhhh, upgrades from my youtube captures, i wanted ‘Angry’s’ splendour in full digital quality, thanks to Aunty Viv’s dvd i am sated.
For Ves who taught me that Gas masks can be taken out of the bunker and onto the runway, and sometimes into the bodoir.
Recently ‘RAGE’ played some old episodes of Countdown, and i was cock o’ hoop to see that they played ‘Product of your mind’ by ‘Jimmy and the boys’, if for no other reason than it features Joylene Hairmouth’s greatest ever filmed performance.
This is the Citizen Kane of Joylene, a veritable Hairmouth cinema verite.
I love this clip soooo fucking much, Joylene is treating the keyboard with such contemp, but it’s trained contemp, she’s going at it like Shirley in the Partridge family, after Ruben Kinkade accidently drugged her, instead of Danny.
Think Marta Hari from Lancelot Linc’s Evolution Revolution .. that style of playing, where the hands look like they are frantically trying to fan someone back into conciousness after a bad, or really good pill.
We all know what was done to those poor bastard monkey’s to get them ramped up and hopping about, simian electro play was the order of the day, and Joylene looks, and performs in this clip like she’s had a car battery freshly clipped to her nipples.
To this very day, each time i enter the Opera House’s grand hall i have a knot in my stomach, knowing that Dame Joan Sutherland and Olivia Newton John opened that place, when all along the first person on the stage should have been the real La Stupenda Joylene.
Let me tell you, i bet Joylene would have had a better camel toe than Olivia did in her black lycra pants in Grease (another starring roll Joylene was jyped out of).
I do my bit, every morning i lay a fresh lilly before the framed photo i have in my lounge room, that was taken last year of Joylene, myself and my filthy bitch bestie ‘Beryl’.
Both Beryl and i agree that besides the night we came across a leather clad, and Rose free Willie Porteous at Sleaze ball, in the downstairs shitters in the Hordern Pavillion, our evening with Joylene was the pinacle of our very existence.
Below are some screen captures i took from the clip. I’ve posted some before, but they were from a lame ass Youtube clip, these are better quality, and it’s all about preserving art in the best possible quality .. and taste.
Nico, me and Adam.
With Barb’s at the Opera House for Stephen Fry.
Matt, my mover and shaker friend from Melbourne.
Aunt Viv and i dining on African food for my birthday.
Julie, my fab friend nominated for Australian of the year.
“Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another” Elizabeth Cody Stanton.
