MELLIPOP LOVES MEATLOAF

Ok, so lately I have been walking that fine line between being ironic, and being a bogan.

My favourite new item of clothing - liberated from a local St Vincent de Paul store – happens to be a tight-fitting t-shirt from Meatloaf’s 2004 tour of Australia. I pounced on the bugger as soon as I saw it, the delectable taste of postmodern irony rising up in the back of my throat like the sweetest-tasting bile. A few alterations (or should that be altercations) with a pair of scissors later, and the transformation was complete. I had the perfect item of take-the-piss kitsch coture to call my own.

Or so I thought. The voice of my “inner-indie chick” kept telling me that I was a walking testament to the power of self-referential irony. Until my middle-aged hairdresser mistook me for a bogan later that very same day.

The conversation went something like this:

HAIRDRESSER: (lip discernibly curled up in distaste) Oh, so you like Meatloaf, do you….?

MELLIPOP: (momentarily stunned) Oh…..NO! GOD no! I HATE Meatloaf... The t-shirt is meant to be ironic….

HAIRDRESSER: (looks completely blank) Oh.

(head tilts slightly to the left like a dog trying to understand a new command)

What do you mean, ironic….?

MELLIPOP : (stunned again but quickly reinstates a patronising composure) Um…. Ironic. It’s like…. Taking the piss…..yeah? It’s a joke.

HAIRDRESSER: (assumes an extraordinary facial expression that simultaneously combines both perfect understanding and utter confusion) Oh right. Sure. Ha ha that’s funny…..

(continues to look at me in an oddly confused way, as though she is entirely unable to comprehend why anyone would wear a t-shirt of someone they professed utter disdain for)

This was my first brush with the possibility that maybe my idea of irony is someone else’s interpretation of sincerity. To be thought of as a Meatloaf fan - that disturbs me. I mean, how can anyone like Meatloaf WITHOUT irony. What kind of person would that make me. A fucking bogan - that’s what! I didn’t move 4000 miles away to escape my westie roots for nothing you know. I might as well pack up my Meatloaf t-shirt and move back to Blacktown, for all the progress I’ve made.

That’s the inherent danger of irony. You’re always at risk of becoming the joke yourself, when what you’re really trying to do is to smugly host it at someone else’s expense.

Which is where the presumptuous girl in the next real-life anecdote got it completely wrong. Ok I ‘fess up. It was me….. Irony got me again.

The following incident took place during the course of the day of training I had to do when I got offered the job at Virgin Music, replete with 50 other fresh-faced new recruits. Based on their openly-stated recruitment policy, the Virgin HR team sought to choose only the cutest, hippest young things from the pool of 4000 candidates who were interviewed for positions. And me.

One of the many excruciating team-building exercises we had to partake in that day involved each of us standing up and telling everyone what our favourite movie and recording artist is. And as an aside, it’s amazing how many Michael Jackson fans there are still, considering the fact that he hasn’t recorded anything remotely decent since the early 80’s.

Now anyway, this perky blonde girl gets up to speak, and she would have been all of 19 years old. She tells us that her favourite artist is Meatloaf. Now I think that she’s taking the piss right, so I immediately burst into hysterical laughter. Then I notice that no-one else is laughing and that everyone in the room is glaring at me with sharply berating eyes. Including the 19 year Meatloaf fan, who looks somewhat stunned and less than pleased with my unexpected outburst.

I felt bad for her at first. But seriously, why should she be spared the full extent of our (read: my) vehement ridicule and scorn? Think about it for a second…. This girl has the ENTIRE HISTORY OF WESTERN POPULAR MUSIC to choose from, and her favourite artist is fucking MEATLOAF!?! You know what I think? She might be very nice but that girl is an absolutely clueless fuckwit and she deserves to know that about herself. And I reserve the right to make that clear to her.

Because I am a perfect study in self-aware irony.

And she is just a dumb bogan.