Long-term subscribers (which, to be honest, is almost all of you) will know interruptions to this weekly list/lament are rare, however they've been a bit unavoidable of late unfortunately.

The good news is that my surgery went well, though I do seem to have particularly heinous re-entries to this earthly plane (I felt like a wooden block a furious giant was failing to tear apart) that necessitate drastic doses of morphine.
Thankfully the resulting nausea has largely leached from me. Now I've just the unfamiliar terrain of obligatory indolence to negotiate: 6 weeks in a sling & barely any use of my right arm for months.
Typing is ridiculously painful and deejaying an unknown. I've managed a radio show but by goddess it was a struggle. I still can't get headphones on.
But I need some kind of distraction (not to mention income) so I'm resuming work and continuing to transmit. See below for traces.


Thursday January the 21st ~

Hear unmixed fragments of obsolete audio activated by a drugged-up drongo in a suit from 5 til 9PM at Palmer & Co. Naturally entry is free.


Saturday January the 23rd ~

Jack Off has always been a fever dream for the fraught and freaky, currently more than ever.
Hear the show on Free Broadcast Incorporated between 3 and 5PM, or stream on-demand anytime thereafter.

We begin the new year's missives as we ended last year's, with an apology for infrequency.

A couple of days after I last wrote I had a classic old-guy mishap whilst taking my boy to the mind-blowing new Sydney Park skate set-up. Borrowed a kids board, as a brand-new one was being custom-built for me down the road. Was feeling up to it as I've miraculously been in the best shape I can recall for decades - super-active, strong, flexible and fit.
I hadn't skated for 30 years, since stacking bad on Cleveland Street on the way to a party whilst at uni - and waiting 4 or 5 hours in RPA to get my dislocated shoulder put back in. Needed an op after that. Luckily my mum ran the rooms of a reputed shoulder surgeon in Doctor (now Professor) David Sonnabend, who patched me up for free as I recall. After that I gave up skating and my favourite activity, body boarding (which had already pulled that socket apart about 6 or 7 times prior). But I hope to body surf til the end of days.

Anyway an innocuous slope and slight tilt had me land from no great height or speed on my good shoulder (my right, the left always having been the issue - and I am right handed) and bang, it was out. Sadly seriously smashed inside too somehow. I've had X-rays, CT scans, MRIs and the reports are not pretty reading - full of references to high-grade tears, completely torn off bits and bone fragments. It was either crazy-bad luck re the angle of the fall, or just an accident waiting to happen (or both) - but either way I need an operation ASAP.
Then, would you believe it, my son fell out of a tree whilst camping west of the Mountains two days later, badly breaking his right wrist. He was ordered to fast for an operation to fix that in Bathurst, before being directed instead to Orange the next day (after fasting, for nothing, again), before that too was cancelled and he instead had to come back to the Childrens' Hospital in Randwick. There they (thankfully) dispensed with surgery and yanked his bones back into place on gas alone. This was all before the bloody new year could even ring in that night!

So it has been A TIME - with 2021 so far not particularly dissimilar to the endless escalation that was 2020. Naturally all surgeons are on holiday so I've been hustling like crazy with my damn left hand to wrangle any remedial medical possibility - and come tomorrow I may actually see the one shoulder specialist who will be back in surgery before February.

On this front I want to send endless love and gratitude to the indomitable Professor Sonnabend, who reviewed my MRI report from his bed whilst himself hospitalised in St Vincents. Without David's authoritative assertion that I needed surgery I'd have never been able to get a bit of a head-start in spending a week now hunting down help.

TLDR: Shit happens, no newsletter, hurt/s to write.

But the show/s must go on...


Saturday January the 2nd ~

Jack Off will never yield to anything beyond acute hospitalisation or incarceration (perhaps not even death). We air from 3 til 5 every Saturday arvo rain, hail, or shine.


Sunday January the 10th ~

Of course my minor woes are matched or exceeded by some severe disruption, displacement and loss for people here and across the globe at the moment. One couple who have persevered in endlessly re/arranging their nuptials are Josephine and Mikey.
This Sunday, at last, less than 100 (can you fucking believe that 600+ wedding, or the bloody beaches couple and their mob?!) guests will gather at Rockpool to celebrate their union and (self-evident) commitment. And I will get to work with my brilliant photographer partner Liz, who has been so steadfastly caring for me of late, for the first time. Sure I'll be medicated heavily, wearing a sling (and a mask) but shit, we all need light, love and each other right now.
Onwards (if not up)...