• The freewheelin’ April issue of e-gazette f u z z y l o g i c “clever fist” has been extracted from the interdimensional mainframe.

• I’ve made a couple of playlists – one to complement my 2020 article From Popcorn to Infinity and Beyond which features many arpeggiated synth tracks. You can find it on Spotify HERE. I’ve also hand cranked a playlist to accompany Lucky I’m With Aimee (my ode to Aimee Mann & my music journey of 1996). That can be found HERE. Also, there’s a nifty soundtrack for my e-gazette f u z z y l o g i c which can be tracked HERE. Oh yeah – not to mention my ode to ambient music which I posted in January (featuring instrumental playlist within).

• I’ve dug up some radio segments I made as the work experience kid for Triple J’s Morning Show in 2003. It’s called The Heart Of The Bollocks and combines my poetry, instrumental music and vox pops. I’ll be uploading one a week for the month of April. See the page on my site HERE. All episodes are now available on bandcamp.

• The March sedition of e-gazette f u z z y l o g i c “sissy spacex” has been slow tracked from the rainbow circus.

• The February bite of f u z z y l o g i c “fred savage garden” is hotly pressed on the ‘net. The January instalment “january jeans” can be perused here. Earlier, I enjoyed penning an article about the links between anxiety and ambient music.

• A man copped abuse for walking his cat along a beach in Tasmania. I’d tell you more but the story is behind a paywall.

2022 RECAPPED IN A SANDWICH

• The December issue of f u z z y l o g i c is available hitherto. Have I told you lately that I love … making adjustments to the J Hizzle youtube channel.

• I’ve recAPPED my year with gusto. Read 2022…all my ducks in a row.

• The September episode of my f u z z y l o g i c e-gazette is out now on Dino Records.

• I have writing included in the forthcoming anthology Admissions and will be performing at its launch in Melbourne Oct 7. Check here for details.
  

• If you’re in Melbourne there’s a special screening of the documentary Happy Sad Man coming up. If not, keep an eye out for it appearing near you. Happy + sad (but not sappy, man). Click here for details.
  

• I recently spoke at Conflux Bendigo about Funemployed and at the Our Reform conference hosted by Mental Health Victoria about Get Up Mum. That’s a pretty good week in my speaking career, so if you’d like to enquire about my wares check out Speaking Out.

• I spoke about ART & stuff in Melbourne Aug 3 alongside Maxine Beneba Clarke and Sian Prior. It was hosted by Satellite Foundation and there’s more info at this link.

• I’ve written a few new pieces for the website of late, cornering in on my own mental health and caustic perceptions of the state of things. Check out Depress Conference, How Do You Talk To A Depressed Person & i Is The Loneliest Letter.

• I’ve been reimagining some of my early music releases. I’ve reissued my album Birthmark which I made when I was eighteen.

• I’m acknowledging the 20 year anniversary since I started my segment as The Bedroom Philosopher on Triple J’s Morning Show. There’s celebratory offerings over at BP website.

•  show report duck says ” Get Up Mum ” play at Theatre Royal ™️ was a  (success). Thanks peoples.  The plan is to tour the show as soon as thinkable.

• Yeesh, not long to go now till the super dupe Get Up Mum show at Theatre Royal Hobart. There’s a piece in TasWeekend in the Mercury today. As well as an interview situation on ABC HOBART.

• I’ve been flat out working on a theatre version of Get Up Mum. It’s premiering March 17 at the Hobart Theatre Royal. ! It’ll be PEN15 meets the moving bits of Muriel’s Wedding. I got a couple of arts grants. I may have spent most of the money on tape decks and super soaker 50s. Tickets available HERE.

2021 BIZ

• The new format vibes of  f u z z y  l o g i c  are here. Feat. Rage Against The Machine, Mother Nature & Almond Milk reviews. It’s like a boozy wedding speech where ideas are getting married.

• I wrote a column about my improbable nostalgia for Compact Discs. Also a film review for one of my favourite Australian movies Love Serenade.

• Last year I gave a witness statement to the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System. I went to town on it. It felt pretty special to have somewhere official to park my story.  I was in Melbourne to do a reading which was cancelled the night before because of an outbreak so I ended up performing to a crowd of 4 people while it was being filmed for later. Fortunately, I assured everyone that I thrive under those conditions. It’s been released now. My witness statement is out there in a format or two.

• I’m an ambassador for Satellite Foundation – a groovy indie not-for-profit who hold camps and run programs to help kids of parents with a mental illness. If you know anyone in this situation (aged 8-23) who could benefit from the connections and support that Satellite provides (they don’t even have to be Victorian as they have online workshops too) – then do suss out their website and drop them a line!

• I contributed to what is one of my favourite pieces of radio. The latest episode of the All In Your Mind podcast on RN. You can also learn a fair bit about the royal commission from it.

• I started up a FB account under my own bloody name too – love that hustle.

2020 RAMIFICATIONS

• I’ve made a Get Up Mum soundtrack which will be released on Bandcamp May 28. It marks the two year anniversary of its release. Here is the first single Reverse Purgatory. Copies of the book are available from Booktopia.

• The 2020 edition of my Mailing List.

• My track Northcote (So Hungover) has been getting a bit of heat, with Triple Js impending Hottest 100 of the Decade. I wrote up a big ol’ school project / negotiated study for the occasion.

• I wrote a piece about waterslides for The Big Issue.

• Get Up Mum is discussed at length on cool new 90s TV Show THE BOOK ZONE! Cool dude. I also have a crack in this Readings Bookshop podcast.

2019 DISTILLATIONS

• Following the success of the Get Up Mum radio show, it may be developed into a one-man theatre show. 12 year old me will be played by me or Shane Jacobson.

• I’ll be presenting the book at a forum for Mental Health Carers Tasmania in Glenorchy, as you do.

• I presented Get Up Mum at Frankston Library July 27 at 1pm. Hey, there’s a general belief in the literary industry that your career is going well if you are headlining Frankston Library. Saturday afternoon is a sought after time slot. The vibe was a bit Tubeway Army meets Tasty Toobs.

• The big news is I’ve been working on a 10-part series of Get Up Mum for some months. Everything will drop on RN’s Life Matters May 27. The episodes will air daily from 9:20am and be available on the Life Matters site. There’s also a big scrolling story about my tapes that will be featured on the ABC News website that day. It’s all rather exciting. You’ll be able to hear my cassettes. There will be voices.

• I gave an interview for Triple R’s Backstory. The CD player didn’t want to play my tape samples (!) so I was forced to do some Nanlibbing.

• In May / June I presented the book at Fitzroy Town Hall for Yarra Libraries & Fitzroy Writers Fest. It was like 730 meets Recovery. Pathos & props (business as usual really). I met a fellow only child whose Mum also had schizophrenia. SNAP

• Back in December Get Up Mum got props from Miles Franklin winner Sofie Laguna on ABC News Breakfast. She said it was “moving, entertaining and fresh.” Watch out for The Fresh Prince of Burnie (Notflix).

• Last year I wrote my first ever anthology introduction for my former University of Canberra’s writing anthology Analecta. Check it out HERE.

2018 TIDINGS

• Get Up Mum has gone into a second printing! Thanks everyone for your support, retail and otherwise.

• I’ll be in Canberra launching my old University of Canberra’s writing anthology Analecta. Smith’s Alternative Bookstore, Monday November 19, 7pm.

• Get Up Mum was a ‘chartbuster’ in Sydney this week. Number 7 with a chocolate bullet at Better Read Than Dead! Coolness.

• The book continues to be well received. I have had things happen like being contacted by people I went to primary school with but barely spoke to who have revealed they are in the same situation as me caring for a mentally ill parent and do I have any advice for them? It’s kinda powerful.

• I’ve also been contacted by the 2-3 organisations that exist specifically to support children of parents with a mental illness. This is after having gone through my own journey with that sort of thing some months ago and despite having a solid google not really finding anything. My book has acted as a distress flare. Only this week I went and gave a talk at a workshop for FaPMI (there is also Satellite & Kookaburra). There were kids there just like me.

• There have been recent interviews in Frankie with an excerpt featured on Double J.

• The Get Up Mum Melbourne launch was epically special. As promised there were 80s ballads, Tripod and Le Snaks – in a church!

Went along to @justinheazlwood‘s Book launch for “Get Up Mum”. Probably the most entertaining book launch I’ve attended. Storytelling, 90s Eucharist, pipe organ playing (The Never Ending Story theme), @TripodActual‘s harmonies moving us to tears and lots of humour of course.

— Squirrel Comedy (@squirrel_comedy) June 10, 2018

• There’s been a splendorous response from media so far. I’ve been hitting the circuit, check out the smorgasboard of links below:

1. I make my Guardian debut in this classic interview from fellow only child Elizabeth Flux.
   
2. A tender and compelling chateroo with Myf Warhurst.
   
3. Pseudo counselling session with excellent psychologists on Triple R’s Radiotherapy.
   
4. Lifestyles of the poor and infamous, or eloquent expose by one of Australia’s hardest working artists? You decide as I bare my artistic soul for Kill Your Darlings.
   
5. Another day, another insanely personal interview with Frankie magazine.
   
6. Rigorous yarn about schizophrenia on RNs Life Matters. Plus more radio action with ABC Adelaide & ABC Sydney.
   
7. Sunday afternoon driving home with Mum (excerpt on Soundcloud.)
   
8. Watch the trailer on YouTube.

2017 IN REVIEW

• I had a piece published in the Good Weekend about phone boxes on October 21.

• I played Harry Potter in the Wheeler Centre event Harry Who? The True Heroes of Hogwarts October 25 at the Athenaeum Theatre. I used to get called ‘Harry’ when I worked at the Canberra Labor Club. I was the only bloke with mid-length hair and glasses serving glasses of mid-strength.

• Ten Melbourne writers were asked to write about ten locations around Darebin for Writing This Place. I was given Northcote Town Hall. For my piece Stella & the Elders I wanted to reflect on disability advocate Stella Young who performed her show ‘Tales From The Crip’ there. I also included some Aboriginal Dreamtime figures. It’s the first fiction I’ve written in ten years.

• I’ll be reading my own writing at Justin Heazlewood: Selected Readings at Bella Union (Trades Hall), September 24 from 2:30pm. I’ll be joined by special guest Elizabeth Flux.

• Four of my columns are featured in Frankie Magazine’s anthology Something To Say.

• A piece I wrote was featured in the book Letter To My Teenage Self published by Affirm. It’s been collated by a 13 year old Melbourne schoolgirl to confront bullying. It includes contributors such as Maggie Beer, Peter Alexander and Kate Ceberano. Icecream, PJ’s & Bedroom Eyes.

• I also have a Funemployed related piece included in Copyfight, released last year.

2015-2016 HAPPENSTANCE

• Funemployed was nominated for the Most Underrated Book award. (It’s a thing.) I presented Funemployed: The Sequel at last year’s Bigsound feat. Jen Cloher in scintillating form.

• Crazy Bastards was nominated for Best Performance at the Online Video Awards & an AWGIE in the ‘Drama or Comedy’ category.

• The Bedroom Philosopher ditty ‘I Hate Myself’ was recently featured on RN’s Earshot during mental health week. Still got it.

• Here’s a clip of my Ode to Melbourne inspired by a John Bracks painting at the NGV.

• Funemployed LP is out on Bandcamp and iTunes. You can hear the RN Podcasts.

• I recently appeared at Margaret River Writers Festival, Music NT’s Intune conference and the Smith Family’s ‘We Mind Be Kind’ anti-bullying campaign in Tasmania.

• Funemployed has gone into a second (de)pressing. I continue to get lovely emails from fellow artists including this one from Karen:

“You have no idea what it means to me to have someone voice so beautifully & honestly these experiences – that so reflect the story of my little unsuccessful independent 25 year career! Every page seems to reflect my own experiences,.. Every pages shines a little light on my most excruciatingly difficult ‘artist moments’ and draws conclusions I painstakingly took years to come to. In a very difficult ‘semi retirement’ stage of my career, it has been wonderful to see that I wasn’t alone all this time,.. That I did not experience these things because I am a failure or a ‘little bit shit’,.. Just someone who was not so good at playing the game! It’s a great book, well done!”

• My wee ABC series Crazy Bastards has been remembered through a series of recently published stills.

2014 SHENANEGINS

• A piece I made for ABC’s The Mix.

• Amanda Palmer has given Funemployed a thorough plugging on her blog. “Perfect for artists who have been at it for years and want to read the story of someone who’s telling it like it fucking is.”

• Funemployed was featured in Melbourne Writers Festival director Lisa Dempster’s Top 10 of the year. (Grug and the 3-D Printer narrowly missing out.)

• Funemployed also scored a touchdown on ABC’s Book Club. Marieke Hardy says: “It’s a wonderful, sad, beautiful, interesting memoir and anyone that’s working in music or art in Australia should definitely read it.”

• Funemployed Book and EP are out and about! Here is my Eight Things They Don’t Tell You About Being An Artist. Plus a self-interview with Three Thousand and a tell-something interview with Broadsheet.

• I made a Mix for The Lifted Brow – songs for artists.

• Art Day! was a ripping success. I read the whole book. It ran to time. There was palpable warmth emanating from the generous hearts of Australia’s creative brethren. Ultra thanks to my wing-readers Sabrina D’Angelo & Oliver Clark. Plus resident artists Yvette Coppersmith, David Blumenstein & John Pace. Love to The Awkwardstra and Fluorescent Organs. Two thumbs up.