The Blindboy Podcast - Teenage Discos and Lynx Africa

Episode Date: August 11, 2021

By popular request, following on from the Chicken Fillet Roll podcast. I speak about the Irish cultural significance of Teenage Discos and Lynx Africa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cop a hot gob full of the Turlock mud puddle, you wet beelzebobs. Welcome to the Blind By Podcast. What's the crack with you? I've had a... I've had a bit of a challenging week, challenging last two days because one of my cats is ill and I'm a bit worried. I'm a bit worried because I'm kind of powerless you'll know from listening to

this podcast that I I have these two cats but I don't have them it's like I have two cats who I give a house to and I feed them outside and they're wild but they're not

wild so they live with me and I feed them but they're feral as such so I can't pet them they're still very scared of me even though it's been like two years and it's a relationship that works I'm happy with it I'm just happy to be I'm happy with it. I'm just happy to be... I'm happy that they're alive and healthy because I can intervene and feed them and I can give them a little house, a small little wooden house for when the weather is shit. And their brother and sister, and they're called Silken Thomas, who's a boy and he's deaf,

and Nappertandy, who's a girl and she's not deaf. Nappertandi, who's a girl, and she's not deaf. And Nappertandi kind of looks after Silken Thomas because he's deaf. Not only is he deaf, but I don't think his eyesight is great because his pupils never dilate. They're always like snake's eyes. You know, even when it's dark, his pupils never go big. And his coordination isn't great so they're white cats you see and his sister napper tandy she's the one who kind of

is more active she's the one who tells me when they want food and all of this stuff so Silken Thomas very much relies upon his sister Napertandi for survival and she's ill at the moment she's got her mouth is drooling really bad and she

can't eat her food now it's only been like that for a day but and she's generally unwell. You know her tail is down. So she's ill. And I don't know what it could be. And I looked it up.

Worst case scenario she's been poisoned. Which would break my fucking heart. Because I lost the cat before. To suspected poisoning. Worst case scenario she's poisoned. Best case scenario she has like an abscess on her tooth now the problem is they're both feral cats so i can't just catch i can't just catch napper tandy put her into a box and bring her to the vet because i simply can't get close enough to her to even catch her. And I can't like call the Limerick Animal Rescue people

because as soon as someone who isn't me goes near those two cats, like I had someone fixing my boiler recently. As soon as someone who isn't me comes into their area, they disappear for like two days. They just get terrified and they disappear for like two days they just get terrified and they disappear somewhere for two days so it's it's difficult for me to get the the animal rescue people involved so tomorrow i'm gonna i'm gonna have to literally try and trap her depending on how she is now she could be grand she could be grand she because i looked at her earlier and she wasn't

drooling as much but tomorrow i'm gonna have to trap her i'm gonna have to get like um wet cat food because i feed them dry cat food wet cat food they go absolutely apeshit for so if i could have i have a cat box that used to belong to my old cat Charlie I'm going to have to set up a trap where I put wet cat food in that and then hopefully she goes in there and I catch her and bring her to the vet but the problem is he's most likely going to go in there first because they have a pecking order with the food whenever food is presented

I don't know why, it must be some type of cat misogyny. He always eats first. Now I could be wrong. It might not be cat misogyny. It could be because he's deaf and his eyesight isn't great. Out of compassion, his sister allows him to eat first. Maybe that's what it is. I don't want to be projecting human patriarchy onto the two cats. But he always eats first. So I don't know how I'm going to trap her with food.

Without first trying to trap him. And I can't have that. That's a fucking doomsday scenario. Because now I have two incredibly nervous and frightened feral fucking cats together in a box. Killing each other. So there's going to be some fucking Tom Clancy shit going on tomorrow to try and figure out how to catch her and her only. So I can bring her to the vet and get her some treatment. So it's a really difficult situation.

I've got a fucking sick cat who I can't physically contact and help. if I try to and if I scare them too much they might leave for two days so that's a strangely stressful situation for me to be in because I'd be quite upset if something happened to those cats in particular if something happened to her

because that poor little boy fucking Silken Thomas, who's deaf and doesn't have great eyesight, he relies upon her and as well, they're brother and sister, they're friends with each other, they have a lovely relationship, they're not lonely, they sleep together in their little wooden house and they cuddle up with each other at night time and they keep each other warm and if one of them wants to go

it would just be fucking heartbreaking and it would hurt really deeply and not only that I couldn't take the one cat that's left I can't tame him and bring him into my gaff and cuddle him and give them a better life

they're just going to be this lonely cat outside on their own missing his sister so that's bothering me at the moment so yeah I just hope to fuck that tomorrow morning when I take a look at her that there'll be an improvement

and what gives me hope is that she's not rejecting food she just can't eat it so that means either it's an issue with her teeth or it's she has something lodged in her throat that she needs to get out and that that's why she can't swallow but if it was poisoning she wouldn't want food if you get me she wouldn't be going over to the dish so I'm going to judge it tomorrow

but most likely I'll be bringing her to the fucking vet I'll be bringing her to the vet to get her looked at which is not an enjoyable experience for a feral cat at all this is a cat who two years of feeding her every day

being nice to her slow blinking, doing all of this, clearly there being trust and all of this there even still I can't get within a foot of her to touch her you know, so that's the

trust issues we're dealing with here, that's how wild she is, apologies if I uploaded uploaded offloaded my cat anxiety on you, did I upload my cat anxiety D because this is an internet transaction

yeah I did I did because you downloaded this podcast like if you're listening to this podcast if you're streaming it you're technically downloading this podcast so therefore

I didn't offload my cat anxiety on you I fucking uploaded it directly into your mind so apologies for that if it was too if it was a lot but I needed to say it to you because, I don't know, if I've got something pissing me off, if I've got something that's bothering me and I want to give you an authentic podcast that's congruent,

by which I mean the words that come out of my mouth matched the emotions inside of me, I think it's appropriate, it's appropriate self-disclosure to say to you at the start I'm worried about my sick cat and then once I name that once I name it and I say it then I can move on congruently but if I lie to you

and it's like there's this thing that's bothering me and I'm not going to tell you then I run the risk of doing an inauthentic podcast and we can't have that so other than that I booked myself a small little live fucking gig on August 22nd which is two weeks away up in Dublin and I tell you why I booked, because it's one of these gigs that's done within COVID restrictions, so I'm guessing there's only going to be like 50 people allowed at

it. It'll be very, very small, all with social distancing. I'll tell you what it is first. It's Blind Boy podcast. I'm going to be speaking with the filmmaker Jim Sheridan, right? He's a big filmmaker. And it's going to be in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham it's called All Curious Minds so is it sold out? I don't know, it got announced three or four days ago, there's probably only like 50 tickets

so if you want to come to that and you're in Dublin on the 22nd, it's August two weeks away then just type in All Curious Minds, Blind Buy, Ball Club and Jim Sheridan. Get yourself a ticket. Assuming there's one there, they might be gone.

Now, if you're freaking out going, August 22nd, Blind Buy, that's when the All-Ireland Final is on. Well, this gig is at 12.30 in the day. So it's 12.30 noon that this gig is happening. And I'm doing it for me. I'm So it's 1230. Noon. That this gig is happening. And. I'm doing it. I'll tell you.

I'm doing it for me. I'm doing it for my head. Because. I haven't done any. Social distancing gigs. During the pandemic. I haven't. Availed of any opportunities.

A couple of reasons. First of all. Personally. I'd like to do a gig when we're allowed fucking gig again. Like, I've got three sold-out Vicar Streets, okay? They were for February 2020. They kept getting postponed because of the pandemic.

But I want to do them. But then I was thinking, fuck it, man, that's 2,000 people a gig. So they'll probably get rescheduled to like November and I've got a history of social anxiety and I can't believe that two years ago I used to go and do gigs to huge crowds that I used to walk out on stage just me and have a huge crowd there I can't believe that I used to be that person so because of that that has me a little bit worried because I can't empathize with what it's like and I've forgotten to have a big audience

there and it's just me up on stage it's kind of frightening so I think it's wise of me to take one or two really small gigs where I'm there with an audience, to wean myself back into it, and to go, oh no, this isn't scary at all, you've done this loads, it's fine, so I think it's wise, to do one or two 50 people gigs,

rather than going fucking bollocks deep, straight into fucking Vicar Street, with 2,000 people, you know what I mean, it's just a smart move the other reason as well i wasn't doing any pandemic gigs is over the course of the pandemic i changed my entire model i changed my entire model of of how i how i work essentially the pandemic showed me that wow all it takes is a disease to come along and it destroys my entire industry, the live industry.

It takes away my livelihood. Fuck me, that's scary. Wow. And I changed things up and I said, I'm never relying upon live again. I'm never relying upon that. If it's that fragile, I'm never relying upon it. So I moved things online.

You know, I've got the Patreon I started doing Twitch and I made a decision that said from here on in I'm going to become pandemic proof so if another pandemic was to happen I'm not absolutely fucked because also the Irish government have demonstrated that they simply don't care about the arts industry in Ireland. They don't care. We don't even have an effective roadmap in place as to what the live industry is going to look like moving forward. The government really showed us that they don't give a shit. Knowing that there's going to be 50,000 people allowed into Croke Park for Harlan, but we don't know how many people are allowed to go to gigs

it's really really poor so I never want to rely upon live gigs again I never want to rely upon them I want to stick with my Patreon and things like that that's what I love doing making content putting it out and then I do love gigging but I'm

only going to do the gigs that I want to do that's how I'm going to do it from now on. And I'm two years older as well. I'm drifting farther into my thirties, you know. And gigging, gigging is a younger person's game. It's very demanding. There's a lot of late nights. And I don't mean late nights on the piss.

I mean, you get off stage at fucking 12 and you're buzzing and then you're driving you're not home till 8 in the morning that takes its toll when you're doing that more than once a week even if you go back to your hotel if you're up on a stage and you don't get off that stage till 10 o'clock at night 11 o'clock at night your brain isn't switching off so you're not sleeping at all so people who gig don't sleep a lot simple as that so i definitely don't like doing that once a week or more than once a week also do you know what other gig i'm going to be doing soon enough um down in cork that lovely festival it takes a village which is a fantastic festival down in trebalgan right, they're announcing

some type of socially distant situation where they're putting on a Takes a Village festival in the middle of September and I'm going to go down to that and do a little podcast so check out It Takes a Village if you're in the Cork area, the lads who run that as well are lovely, they're sound chaps

what am I going to do this week on the podcast I'm going to speak about I'm going to do some paddywhackery I'm going to do some paddywhackery, I'm going to run that as well are lovely they're sound chaps what am i gonna do this week on the podcast i'm gonna speak about i'm gonna do some paddywhackery i'm gonna do some paddywhackery i'm gonna lean into some paddywhackery by which i mean do you remember i did a podcast about six weeks ago about chicken fillet rolls and the reason i did the chicken Fillet Roll podcast was... Go back and listen to that if you haven't heard it. Chicken Fillet Rolls are a unique Irish foodstuff. And the reason I did a Chicken Fillet Roll podcast is... A lot of people were asking me.

Because what's happened is... The Irish podcast space has changed over the pandemic. Over the past two years I'm saying two years it's nearly lads 2022 is fucking four months away almost so it's been nearly two years

but like over the course of the pandemic the Irish podcast space has changed not just what podcasts are being made, but who's listening to podcasts. So pre-Covid, the people who were listening to podcasts were nerds.

People like me. People like me who were trying to move away from listening to radio or watching TV because they're like, this has gone to shit. Advertising has destroyed it. There's nothing interesting here. I need some niche topics. And that's who used to listen to podcasts.

But then over COVID, something happened. The people who used to listen to radio or watch TV, they all of a sudden now moved on to podcasts. Like there's a lot more people listening to podcasts now. Way more people listening to podcasts. I think it's work from home. I think people were working from home and they wanted to hear human voices

and podcasts were the best option. But podcasts now have become huge. Now this is good and bad. It's good because now you have more people listening to podcasts. So that's fantastic. It's bad because you have more people listening to podcasts, so that's fantastic. It's bad because you have more people listening to podcasts. The huge corporations who were making shit of TV and radio are now trying to make shit of podcasts.

Podcasts are good because the people who make them are genuinely passionate about what they're making. It's usually a small team, or maybe just one person like this podcast, making something because they love making it now you've got big piles of money coming in and just churning out these fucking podcasts and

a lot of them aren't good the quality isn't there so that's the negative of podcasts getting huge over the pandemic and you know what I heard actually and this is why you've got like this is why you've got Spotify, this is why you've got Spotify spending a hundred million on the Joe Rogan podcast. Now I'm not shitting on the Joe Rogan podcast.

I don't like it when Joe Rogan is irresponsible and says like anti-vax type shit. I don't like it when he does that and I don't like it when he's giving platforms to quite a lot of figures on the right. I really disagree with that. When Joe Rogan has a good guest on, I listen to the podcast to hear the guest,

and he is good at interviewing. So I'm not trying to say the Joe Rogan podcast is a bad quality podcast. It's a very high quality podcast that could do with being a bit more responsible every so often, I think. But I'm mentioning it because Spotify paid him 100 million for the exclusive rights to his podcast that's fucking huge that's

that's Hollywood blockbuster money and Spotify aren't silly boys they know what they're doing so here's what I heard a little little industry buzz apparently the reason podcasts are being invested in so hugely at the moment is the entertainment landscape of the future as in the next decade and beyond is going to be within self-driving cars okay so over the next 10 years we're going to see petrol cars are going to start going out. We're going to start seeing electric cars and we're going to start seeing self-driving cars. So your dashboard will be where entertainment happens. So apps are fighting for dominance in this future space.

Like think of your fucking smartphone and all the apps that are on it. Now imagine your smartphone becomes your fucking car that essentially drives you to work and then as your car is driving you you now have all these apps to explore on your dashboard and they'll most likely be listening apps because even in a in the next decade with self-driving cars i don't think we legally be able to watch video in our car. You still have to have some awareness of the road to take the wheel. So things like podcasts, audiobooks,

that's the new, a brand new entertainment space where you can give full attention because you're not driving. They're fighting right now to be the supreme app in whatever cars are being made and apparently podcast investment is going to lead to that so that's why you're going fuck me 100 million for joe rogan jesus that's a lot of money and also where you're seeing all these new

podcast apps popping up and think of it too when you have a self-driving car that's using artificial intelligence and it's an electric car, those cars, the self-driving AI cars, they learn how to drive by farming data. all the data of your driving and then that app not only sells that data to advertisers but also sells the data of your driving to a machine learning company that then teaches self-driving cars to become better at driving so it makes a lot of sense it makes a lot of sense that that's what things are going to be like in the next decade. How the fuck did I do that now? How the fuck did I get from anxiety around my poor drooling cat and trying to trap her to pontificating about the future of the self-driving car industry via podcast investment?

I don't know. But anyway, paddywhackery, alright? So I first started to notice a change in podcast audiences about a year and a half ago because all of a sudden I was being I was being asked questions such as talk about chicken fillet rolls or people would say comments like I listen to your podcast I don't like it when you talk about art but I'd love to

hear you talk about something like chicken fillet rolls and I had a choice am I going to be an elitist prick or am I going to respond to changing demographics and say fuck it I will do a podcast about chicken fillet rolls and I did it and I actually really enjoyed it and I got to do it in my own way I'm glad I did so this week I'm going to speak I'm going to I'm going to speak about other things that I'm asked to speak about that are similar to chicken fillet rolls so most of the comments I get from these people who I think, the people who use

Facebook, that's who these people are they're people who use Facebook and I'll tell you why when I used to post in like 2018 hey lads listen to my podcast on my Facebook page that has like 450,000 followers so that's a lot the posts would get zero

engagement and every so often you get one or two comments and people would say what's a podcast now when I post on Facebook people know what a fucking podcast is and these are the people who ask for stop talking about art and start talking about chicken fillet rolls. And what they also want to hear me talk about is Lynx Africa, the hot press or the immersion tank, teenage discos. Alright, these are all common themes that kind of mainstream Irish audiences

who listen to podcasts want to hear. Just talk about chicken fillet rolls, Lynx Africa, teenage discos and we'll be happy so fuck it I will I'll give it a go and I'll tell you what inspired this it's just last week last week's podcast was about

the emotion of blame and anger it was a mental health podcast now most of you enjoyed it but when I posted it on facebook I saw these two 18 year old lads talking about it and it kind of brought my heart mental health podcast. Now, mostly he enjoyed it. But when I posted it on Facebook, I saw these two 18-year-old lads talking about it, and it kind of broke my heart. One of them just goes,

oh, no, not a mental health podcast. Just talk about chicken fillet rolls. I like the one where you talked about chicken fillet rolls. And then his friend responded underneath and said, don't worry, man. Maybe next week you'll come back with something good. So fuck it, I will. I'm going to talk about teenage discos in Lynx, Africa

for some harmless nostalgia and to critique their cultural significance in Irish society. So let's begin with Lynx, Africa. Now, it's hard to separate Lynx, Africa with the teenage disco because they're both culturally intertwined. So first off, Lynx Africa is deodorant. It's deodorant that's marketed at young men. If you live in America, it's called Axe.

Lynx is called Axe in America. In Ireland and in Britain, it's Lynx is called Axe in America. In Ireland and in Britain, it's Lynx. So if you were a teenage boy in Ireland, chances are you used Lynx Africa. This was the deodorant that you used. And it was ubiquitous. I'm going to get around to why it was so ubiquitous. First off, in the school that I was in,

it was a terrible situation. In the school that I went to in fifth year, someone was in the gym and they had a lighter and they had a can of Lynx Africa and they used it as a flamethrower. And the teacher came in and saw a young fella using a can of Lynx Africa as a flamethrower and the teacher came in and saw a young fella using a can of links africa as a flamethrower they said this is obviously the first time ever that the teacher had figured out oh my

god you can use deodorant as a flamethrower if you have a lighter the teacher then explained it to the principal the principal then banned all deodorant uh from the fucking from the school which was awful because if you were doing PE in school you were sweating obviously and it's a lot of lads teenage lads who were sweating

profusely and then the teacher we'd say to the teacher let us use our fucking deodorant let us use our deodorant no they're banned go and have a shower

and of course no one's having a shower because a teenage boys are not getting in the nip in front of other teenage boys because they're conscious about their bodies and the massive teasing that'll happen plus there was no running water so we had a stinky school we had a stinky school especially after PE And I remember specifically bringing in my ma's roll-on deodorant, which was sure, sure woman's deodorant, and going to the PE teacher and saying,

I can't set this on fire. Please let me use this. And he confiscated it. But I digress. Lynx Africa. Ubiquitous deodorant for young Irish men. It smell... ubiquitous deodorant for young Irish men it's smell I mean I've nothing against Lynx Africa to this day

some people are like fucking awful I think it's it's the magnolia of deodorants it's woody it's spicy you know

it's it's like what you imagine a man is supposed to smell like. If you recall in your head what you think dad deodorant or dad aftershave is, Lynx Africa does a pretty good job of hitting all those marks. And there was other Lynx fragrances. There was Lynx Java. I used to like Lynx Java.

But the thing with Lynx Java is yes it was nice but it had too much personality it was like, it was lilac it was lilac you know, you get sick of it after a while paint your bedroom lilac it's nice for about a week and then you're dealing with lilac walls

but Lynx Africa is magnolia you can't have a problem with magnolia it just blends in there as wall color then you had lynx atlantis lynx atlantis was a bit like lynx africa but it was like a trying too hard version of lynx africa and there was a slight metallic note to it. So Lynx Africa was the perfect balance. Woody smell that managed to sell an adult masculinity in an olfactory way to teenage boys. Also, most teenage boys were introduced in Ireland, were introduced to Lynx Africa via their mothers at Christmas because Lynx were really good at the old Christmas box sets.

So when you were about 13 what would happen is you'd get your regular Christmas presents and then all of a sudden now it's like oh what's this a Lynx gift box. There's Lynx Africa shower gel and Lynx Africa deodorant. Wow i better try using this now the interesting thing about maz getting you a lynx africa box set at 13 is it's actually covert messaging there's a covert message there now before i get into this i might might as well say about this particular podcast right i can't do this podcast without being a bit rude and at times sexually explicit now if you're a grown adult

grand you're well able for that, but if you're someone who listens to this podcast with like your 8 year old son, then maybe don't because they're going to ask you some they're going to ask you some difficult questions based around things that I bring up so anyway, when your mother

gets you links Africa when you're 13 there's a covert message there and this is how it works your da says to your ma he's going to be 13 soon he's going to need to start washing

underneath his foreskin and then your ma goes well I'm not underneath his foreskin and then your ma goes well I'm not saying that to him and then your da goes well neither am I so they get the Lynx Africa box set Lynx Africa box set given to a 13 year old boy actually means

wash underneath the skin on the top of your dick because it's something you didn't have to consider or think about up to this point in your life but when you hit 13 and you start maturing you're gonna need to wash underneath the top of your dick son now i could go full roland barth on the semiotics of the language used here right i'm just i'm just gonna do it as an aside if the lynx box set is actually covert messaging for washing underneath your foreskin i do find it interesting that in america where most people are circumcised and don't have foreskins lynx is called axe and axe is something you chop things with whereas in the uk and Ireland, where most people aren't circumcised, it's called links.

Your foreskin is linked to your mickey. But I'm not going to go there, because I think that might be a bit too far-fetched. Or maybe not. I mean, we're talking about a company here who are making shower gel for teenage boys. So, at some point, someone's talking about washing dicks at some point in the creation of links at a boardroom or chemists or scientists they're

going to be saying someone's going to be using this shower gel most definitely to wash underneath the skin of their dick is this suitable for the uncircumcised i can tell you a company who doesn't have that conversation whoever the fuck makes original mint sour shower gel if you've ever gotten that underneath your foreskin or on your rectum or your bars you'll know all about it feels like i'm after robbing the devil's bicycle but back to the lynx christmas box set how do we as teenage boys figure out the covert messaging that when your ma gives you links box set at christmas when you're 13 that that actually means wash your dick your ma doesn't say it to you your dad doesn't say it to you the fucking priest says it to you because in my day the early 2000s sex education was delivered to you in school

by a priest when you were 13 and the priest told you wash underneath your dick the priest also said to you when you get wet dreams it's because you dreamt about fucking the devil and if you happen to get an involuntary erection you're supposed to think about a polar bear sitting on an ever-melting block of ice in order to make the erection disappear. This is what I was, verbatim, 13 years of age,

told by a priest, delivering a sex education. Didn't tell us anything about consent. Didn't tell us anything about the risk of pregnancy because they just told us not to have sex in the first place and didn't tell us anything about contraception

because priests can't talk about contraception the early 2000s in Ireland trying to receive my secondary education but anyway when the adult Catholic priest says to your entire class you need to pull the skin of your dick back and wash your dick But anyway, when the adult Catholic priest says to your entire class,

you need to pull the skin of your dick back and wash your dick. Then your mind says, I'm going to use that Lynx Africa that my ma got me. So the covert message was successful. Your parents told you to wash your dick, but they didn't have to because the priest did it for you via the Lynx Africa Christmas box set now the other thing with Lynx is once you got that Christmas box set

you then start becoming aware of Lynx advertising on TV and it was very heavily advertised and Lynx Lynx literally advertised itself as an aphrodisiac. It advertised itself as a fragrance that would attract women. It did this very overtly. On its

ads you'd have a lad wearing Lynx and then all these gorgeous women wanted to ride him and that's how Lynx advertised themselves. It was their tagline they called it the Lynx Effect. I remember they would sell box sets of Lynx Africa and you'd get shower gel, Lynx Africa deodorant

and then a little counter. Do you know like when you walk into a supermarket today during COVID restrictions and the security guard has a little counter to count how many people come into the fucking store links used to give them away with their deodorant and you were supposed to use it

to count how many women were interested in you since you started wearing links so now you start to believe that like I don't mind the smell of this link stuff and not only does it smell nice but the advert is telling me that when I don't mind the smell of this link stuff and and not only not only does it smell nice but the advert is telling me that when I wear it women are going to be mad about me so much that I need to carry a counter around with me and there was a bizarre obsession with aphrodisiac scents in in the early 2000s and late 90s there was a strange like if you went into a male toilet

sometime around 2001 pre 9-11 if you went into a pre 9-11 male toilet there'd be a condom machine and then beside the condom machine they're selling these little bottles of what was known as Spanish Fly it was called

Spanish fly and it's pure one of these things that like someone's someone's grubby father went over to Fort Aventura and had a lot of sex and came back with a bunch of this Spanish fly little bottles of Spanish fly and erotic playing cards and told everybody that if you put this on you it drives the women mad they can't control themselves but this spanish fly stuff used to be sold in all of these men's toilets pre-911 alongside condoms now i looked it up and apparently this spanish fly it's actually a beetle it's a beetle from the mediterranean and how does this beetle from the Mediterranean end up in men's toilets in Limerick as something that makes women uncontrollably attracted to you?

Well, apparently, Roman gladiators used to crush up this beetle in order to entice people into having orgies. And this somehow ended up more than a thousand years later in the toilets of Limerick. But I remember the first time seeing it because I think I was like 10 I was 10 and we went to the cinema

me and my friends went to the cinema to see fucking Independence Day or something and we were in the men's toilets and we obviously had money because we were going to the cinema and we wanted to buy sweets and we saw condoms for the first time and we knew that

we didn't really know what condoms were we just, we knew it was a bad word we knew that you can say fuck, you can say cunt but you can't say condoms around adults and sometimes you'd see a used condom remember that when you were a child I remember that man. Your entire summer

would be defined by it. You'd be there about eight or nine years of age and your friend would run up and they've either found a dead rat or a used condom. And then there's just this used condom on the ground and you pick it up with a stick and put it on a Labrador's back and then the Labrador runs away with the condom on his back and you're howling laughing and talking about the Labrador running with the condom on his back and then an adult hears you say the word condom and you learn very quickly that's the worst word that you

can say, but anyway back to the cinema toilets, so we're in the men's toilets in the cinema and there's a machine there and it's got Spanish Fly aphrodisiac which you can look at the graphic and it's like wow okay well that attracts women whatever the fuck that is and then you've got condoms and my only reference for a condom was something you see on the ground you know used or thrown onto a labrador's back. So anyway, we were 10.

And we ended up getting... We ended up getting kicked out of the cinema for chewing flavored condoms. We were chewing flavored condoms in the middle of fucking Independence Day and a security guard kicked us out we didn't know what the fuck they were we just knew they were bald banana flavored and no internet

no internet so and you're not gonna ask an adult what a condom is because you know when you say condom the adults are just like that's the boldest word ever so bold that I'm not even giving out you I'm just leaving the room and I then eventually learned what a condom was from a fella called Barry Cotter and the same man told me uh when I lose my virginity I'm going to piss inside the woman

so she thinks that I have loads of cum so that man he wasn't a man, he was a boy he was about two months older than me he was about ten that's who told me what a condom was and then you regret all the time you spent over childhood summers

gathered around them with other children staring at them on the ground as these discarded items of rubbish that have this incredible power to scare the living fuck out of any adult who's nearby in case they have to tell you what it is but anyway

three years later, 13, Lynx, Africa what Lynx had done is they had taken so this Spanish fly aphrodisiac that existed only in men's toilets and those little white vending machines the condoms come out of Lynx had taken that

and made it mainstream it was no longer this quiet thing that's hidden away in a men's cubicle with a smell of piss. Now it's on TV. Links were the 100 million Spotify investment in the Joe Rogan podcast. They did for Spanish Fly what Spotify did for podcasts. Now it's all over television and links are going, here's this deodorant and if you use this the women will just they'll follow you everywhere

you won't be able to get rid of them Lynx had become mainstream Spanish fly and this is where we start moving on to teenage discos right but before I talk about

teenage discos let's have a little ocarina pause on April 5th Let's have a little Ocarina pause. The first omen, I believe, girl, is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year.

It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. Who said that? The first omen, only in theaters April 5th. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not

alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca That's sunrisechallenge.ca Bit of a lackluster ocarina this week. Don't know what's going on there. But, uh... lackluster ocarina this week don't know what's going on there but support for this podcast comes via the Patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast

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Then. Help that podcast along. By sharing it. Or leaving reviews. God bless. So Teenage Discuss. Another thing I'm repeatedly asked to speak about,

if it's not Chicken Fillet Rolls or Lynx Africa, it's teenage disgust. These are common things that I'm now asked to speak about by this more mainstream podcast audience that I get from places like Facebook. And I don't want to be an elite an elitist prick

and ignore these people because I'm confident I can speak about these things and do it in a way that I'm comfortable and it's enjoyable it's good crack I enjoy doing this thinking back to ridiculous things in my childhood so teenage discos specifically the Irish teenage disco. Now Lynx Africa very much ties in with the tradition and the lore of the Irish teenage disco. What's a teenage disco? It's a rite of passage. They're frightening. They can be frightening and they can be scary because you're not a child anymore

and the thing is people develop at different stages so you hit 13 and like some of your friends their fucking voices are broken they've got

emerging beards they're the same age as you but they're like twice the size of you so people develop at different stages so the teenage disco can be very intimidating because it's where

it's where you're expected to drink alcohol for the first time and you're expected to have sexual experiences for the first time now the organisers of the fucking teenage discos that's not what they want to do what they want to do is earn money so they hire security guards to stop the drinking and then priests and nuns come along to stop the sexual activity

so I started going to teenage discos when I was 13, there was usually about 2 a year and it's teenage discos in Limerick so what used to happen is that they would take place in GAA clubs out in

the Limerick countryside so not Limerick countryside, so not Limerick City, so you had to go out, way out into the dark countryside if you were from Limerick City to attend a teenage disco that was in a GAA club and run by the

GAA community and getting tickets was really fucking difficult because the GAA clubs that were out the country, they hated people from Limerick City. They thought everyone from Limerick City is trouble. So what they did is you had to apply for tickets and then have the tickets sent to your house. And the only real effective way to do that was if your da or your ma was somehow involved in the GAA, in Gaelic football or in Harlan. If they were somehow involved in that, then the tickets got sent to your house.

But if they weren't, they didn't send tickets to your house. So you had to have friends whose parents were involved in the GAA and then you could get tickets for the teenage disco. So when you finally got to go to the teenage disco, they were always in winter, and it was a strange experience if you were from the city. So someone's parents would drive like six of you in a car, and you'd go deep into the Limerick countryside,

and when you're from the city, the first thing you start to notice is, oh, there's no lights. So everything is dark. So there's all these dark, dark, just darkness as far as you can see. And then this one lonely car park where they've hired generators and outdoor lights, big shiny lights. So you see the teenage disco like

miles and miles in the distance as this strange white halo that's illuminating like the Halloween fog so then you get out of the car and you're it's always this horrible gravelly area

this gravelly car park outside the GAA club and everyone's there, you're fucking freezing you're in my day, you had to wear shoes you couldn't wear tracksuits, forget about it if you wore a, you're not getting in

so you had to wear jeans, shoes, shirt that's it, a uniform and you'd have a group of lads looking like a pack of fruit pastilles in different coloured shirts being trainee men or being a trainee man and then the girls would be wearing fucking

nothing the girls would be wearing tiny skirts and freezing like fucking freezing but as soon as you got to the car park what would happen is you had to smuggle your alcohol with you and the dangerous thing about teenage discos because you're talking people who are 13 14 15 because you have to smuggle your alcohol usually people have what you'd call

naggins of vodka so it's straight vodka in a small bottle that fits nicely in your pants. Now you're not going to get this inside the teenage disco. So what happens is your parents drop you off. You get your naggin of vodka. You disappear into the darkness. And you're from the city, so you don't understand fields and things like that.

You disappear into the pitch black. And you're there you can't see anything you can only hear people and you drink a half a pint of vodka in one go because while you're drinking the vodka there's also security guards going around the field with torches so they know you're in the field trying to drink so people of 13 14 15 put themselves in a situation where they're drinking a pint of vodka in in less than a minute and it's really really really fucking dangerous really dangerous and every teenage disco someone is rushed off in an ambulance to get their stomach pumped

now I was lucky because I had older brothers and my older brothers would basically say this to me they would say you're going to a disco tonight everyone's going to be drinking and I know that you're probably going to drink as well because you're too scared to stand out and say no

which I was I didn't have the confidence to withstand that peer pressure and you don't want to be the the umphala who's not drinking because then they call you a pussy or they call you a chicken or whatever so but my brother said to me don't drink vodka don't drink vodka figure out a way to have some cider or something like that so that's what I did now obviously a 13 year old 14 year old should not be drinking cider either that's still harmful but if you drink too much cider you get sick if you're 13 you get sick but it's far less likely that you're unconscious and need to be rushed to hospital

to get your stomach pumped like you would with vodka which is poison to a young person so i'd have my cider and i would drink a few gulps with make sure everyone saw me drinking those gulps and then when people's backs were turned i'd be tipping the cider onto the ground because I didn't want to drink it was peer pressure I didn't understand I didn't have any context for it I'm like why? why do I want to do it?

it's not even nice so I would drink a little bit and then act drunk and make sure everyone saw me and make sure no one caught me pouring it because if you were caught pouring drink that was a you would be seriously shamed which is awful me and make sure no one caught me pouring it because if you were caught pouring drink that was a you would be seriously shamed which is awful it's awful 13 year olds shaming other 13

year olds because oh he tipped his drink and the worst part about the drinking is the people who were doing the straight naggins of vodka they had to time when they drank perfectly so you had to time drinking an entire pint of vodka just enough so that it would hit you

after you got past the queue so you drink the naggin really quickly you get into the queue the queue could take a long time and you have to hope that by quickly, you get into the queue, the queue could take a long time, and you have to hope that by the time you get past security and are in the disco, that's when the alcohol hits you.

And I remember seeing people, because the thing is, so the bizarre thing about a teenage disco in Ireland, those rural teenage discos, the security guards didn't search you, they sniffed you so you're there queuing up terrified

while a squat 50 year old man with a torch and a high vis jacket called Duselig comes up and gets a good sniff of the air around your mouth and nose fucking mad and the anxiety in the queue And gets a good sniff of the air around your mouth and nose. Fucking mad. And the anxiety in the queue.

To get in the door of the disco. Like. The anxiety that was extreme. Because as you're queuing. You see the people. Who are vomiting. As they get to the top of the queue. Or you see the people who are ready to fall onto the ground because the entire

nagging just hit them and you see them being dragged away and then it's like their parents have to be called back or they might have to go into the ambulance and it's very tense it's incredibly tense to get into the teenage disco but also what's happening

as you get closer and closer to the top where you're going to be smelt, that's when the can of Lynx comes out. So Lynx was used not only to spray yourself so you smelt fantastic for the girls, it was used, one of the lads would have a can of Lynx and you'd pass it amongst each other. One of the lads would have a can of Lynx and you'd pass it amongst each other. And before you got to the top of the queue, you'd spray yourself in as much Lynx as possible to mask the smell of alcohol

when Dusselig in the high-vis jacket smelt in and around your mouth and nose. So if you're lucky, you make it past Dusselig and now you're in the fucking teenage disco and everyone stinks excessively of Lynx Africa because we think it's an aphrodisiac

and it hides the smell of the drink now once you're past those security guards you've got a new problem when you're in the actual disco there's priests and nuns and the priests and nuns are there to make sure that you don't get too close to each other

because now there's girls and boys together. Now this is the real reason for the drinking. No one has the confidence to speak to a person of the opposite sex. So what happens is, you binge drink at a young age in order to speak to someone you fancy, which is deeply unhealthy, deeply unhealthy and is most definitely tied in with that culture of sexual shame and like the sex education we received where they're just telling us nothing other than wash our dicks and think about polar bears so you don't get

an erection, so drink is used as the excuse to feel confident around someone of the opposite sex and you still have to ask your friend, so if you see a girl and you like her and you want to shift her I don't even know if people say shifting anymore, that's what people said when I

was a teenager, it means French kissing I don't even know if people say French, I don't even know if people do that anymore. The fuck do I know? If you wanted to shift a girl, you had to shift a girl. Now that's the thing. There was a lot of lads who, again, they're not fully developed and they don't want to be shifting girls. Because they still kind of want to be playing with toys. But it doesn't matter. You're 13, 14. You're all the same age. People develop at different times.

So you do have boys and girls who are forced to be kissing people of the opposite sex. And they don't want to. They haven't gotten to that point yet in their development where they even understand why it's something they might like to do and i was i was definitely in that category when i was 13 most definitely in that category i was just like what i don't want to be sticking my tongue in some girl's mouth. I don't want to be... You want me to touch where she goes for pisses? The fuck do I have to do that for?

So essentially teenage discos were these bizarre places in GA halls where peer pressure forced you into drink or sexual activity regardless of whether you were ready for it or not. And then they had the security guards and the priests and the nuns to try and pretend they didn't really do anything. Occasionally you'd get a nun

and if you were dancing too close to a girl, a nun would come up with a broomstick and she'd stick it in between the two of you and in general that was happening and I do remember I drank too much cider I drank too much cider and

I was kissing some girl and I got to put my hand up my first bra I was about 13 and I don't even know hand up my first bra. I was about 13, and I don't even know if I was interested in doing it. I just, I knew I had to do it so I could tell the lads afterwards that I did it, and that's why.

And I put my hand up some girl's bra, and when my hand was up there, there was a biscuit crumb on her tit, and for the rest of my life, whenever I put my hand up a girl's bra, I felt a phantom biscuit crumb on her tit and for the rest of my life whenever I put my hand up a girl's bra I felt a phantom biscuit crumb like a biscuit crumb that wasn't there on all tits that I touch

so I don't know what that's about and then another thing about teenage discos that's that was quite shitty is you get the roots of real toxic male behaviour, because, you're worth,

you learn at teenage discos as a lad, I don't know what it's like for girls, but when I was a lad, you learn at teenage discos, your status and worth, within a group of other men, is dependent upon, not upon if you met a nice girl and you like her and you got along with each other and you fancy her.

You couldn't say that because you'd be called a pussy for that. Your worth becomes dependent upon how many girls did you shift tonight? How many girls' tits did you feel? How many girls did you finger did you get did you get a hand job and that was one of the most coveted ones right in terms of status talking with the lads if the lad who got the hand job right and and here's the bizarre thing due to the physical mechanics of a teenage disco hand job they were never anything to brag about to be proud of or even to tell anyone what happened to you because essentially what you had to do

you were asking someone like you're wearing first of all you're wearing these fucking jeans with a belt buckle because that's the only way you're getting in the door so then you had to have some girl while you're standing up try her best to put her hand down the front of your pants where she has no room your dick has no room and it's like saying to someone will you try and shake some dice inside my pants and hit

my testicles as hard as possible loads you have to pretend you enjoyed it then you told all your friends then one of them told her friends, you got called a legend and she got called a slut. And yeah, a lot of toxicity is learned in the teenage disco. A lot of toxic systems that last into adulthood about worth being defined by how many girls you can get off with and what you can get from girls and all this stuff.

It was quite unhelpful stuff to learn. And no sex education to explain things to us. No open dialogue, no conversation. None of that. No trusting adult to initiate those conversations in a safe space because fucking 14 year olds aren't going to initiate that, not a chance, no mention of consent, no mention of it's okay to not want to do something if you don't feel ready to do it, no mention of maybe you should respect another

person's privacy maybe you shouldn't go and tell all the lads this no discussion around why is this person considered a higher part higher status just because they kissed that many girls why does that girl now have less worth in your eyes because she kissed that many boys why do you call that fella gay because he said that he met a girl and he actually liked her he liked her and he liked talking to her

and chatting with her and she was fun why if a fella says that do ye all call him gay what is it about emotional intimacy that feels so threatening to ye that it needs to be chastised as a group also why is the word gay being used as an insult what's that about can we speak about that why do you need to drink a nagging of vodka in order to speak to a girl that you fancy?

What is it about yourself that you don't feel good enough? Or what are you frightened of? Or what does the possibility of rejection mean to you? Why is that so big that you need to drink so much to remove all those inhibitions? Like, they would have been incredible conversations

to have had in a safe group space during sex education I don't know what sex education is like today maybe it's better fucking horrendous when I was a kid I also

I don't know if teenage discos have changed or if they're I haven't know if teenage discos have changed or if they're I haven't a clue my only the only time I hear about teenage discos now is through this kind of weird scaremongering

this terrified men in their thirties who have daughters who talk about teenage discos and some of the things that I hear just sounds not real it's like they've created this Hieronymus Bosch style vision

of what teenage discos are now because they have daughters and they're terrified so one lad said to me a couple of years ago he's like oh man the teenage discos now

no no if you think it was bad when we were doing them you've no idea what they're doing now i'm like what are you talking about so this fella said to me that apparently now with teenage discos uh what the tradition is that girls have to find a tree and all the girls go to the tree and they all take off their knickers and hang them on the tree and then walk into the teenage disco with no knickers on

and this is now what happens at teenage discos as told to me by a man in his 30s with a daughter and it was probably told to him by another man in his 30s with a daughter it sounds too far fetched to be real I just don't believe that loads of girls are hanging their knickers

off a fucking tree it just doesn't, I think that's bullshit and I think what it is, is that it's projection, it's all that toxicity that that fella had to engage in because of peer pressure

when he was 13 at the teenage disco it's now it's now coming back up it's now coming back up into his realisation as the imaginary knickers tree

beside a GAA pitch and what happens to the Lynx Africa again I don't know it's still in shops so people are obviously still using it I don't know if's still in shops so people are obviously still using it I don't know if

Lynx Africa is as culturally significant as it was when I was a teenager the cycle of I wouldn't go near Lynx Africa now obviously

I'll tell you an interesting thing that happens with lads in Lynx Africa so you kind of stop using it. At about 17. At about 17. Well in my day now.

So this was Celtic Tiger. People had jobs in 50 or like. So at about 16, 17. If you had a job. And you had a bit of extra money. That's when people started buying dupe or Paco Rabanne

you could afford a bottle of actual aftershave you know and you had lads trying to get into adult nightclubs so Lynx became nah that's for kids that's for young teenagers but then Lynx makes a bizarre comeback

at around 20 years of age and I remember this distinctly from about the ages of 20 to 25 adult men started wearing Lynx again as a type of a psychological operation and the theory was

no no you're in the nightclub now right now you're in the fucking nightclub so and you're in your twenties you absolutely want women now so what the lads were saying in their twenties

was wear Lynx Africa don't wear Paco Rabanne don't wear Nice Aftershave no fuck that wear Lynx Africa why? because if youshave no fuck that wear Lynx Africa why? because if you

if you're the fella wearing Lynx Africa you'll remind her of the fella she fancied at the teenage disco ten years ago ah right yeah so you ended up with

lads of about 23 or 24 putting on Lynx Africa to try and trick girls into being like I fancy that guy and I don't know why and I say yeah

she doesn't know her brain right via the smell has confused her into thinking that you're the fella that she shifted when she was 13

at the teenage disco and I remember lads having this adult men into thinking that you're the fella that she shifted when she was 13 at the teenage disco. And I remember lads having this, adult men, in their early 20s having this perfectly rational, logical conversation, without realising that all they're doing, you're just regurgitating that bullshit message that was sold to you by the Lynx Corporation when you were 13, that it's Spanish fly, it's this aphrodisiac that drives women out of control,

but the difference now is that you're 23, so you realise that this is harsh shit, so you have to rationalise it, by coming up with this mad idea, bizarre idea, that by wearing it you're tricking her into thinking that she's back at the teenage disco

and she the fella she used to fancy then she'll confuse you with him and then fast forward ten years and you're crying

about the knickers tree into your pint of beamish alright that was that was teenage discos and links alright

for the people on Facebook who wanted me to talk about that and I gotta say I did enjoy it I enjoyed talking about that, that was good fun trip down memory lane alright and then next week I'm probably going to go back to talking about art

dog bless everybody. Chester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game. And you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. you