They took away one of my bollocks, and then I dyed my nipples black
I crawled into your bedroom, you were snorin' on yer back
What the fuck you doin' to me babe...
In February, I will be paying money to go and sit in an old theatre in Dunedin and be sworn at by a hairy bloke older than my dad. Other men of my vintage are excited about going to see cutting-edge international DJs, or big stadium rock acts like U2. Is being excited about going to see Billy Connolly play the Regent as sure a sign as any that elderly decrepitness is vaulting over the horizon to devour me where I stand?
As Millencolin would have put it, can I say no?
Billy Connolly was a massive part of my childhood, or more accurately my adolescence. The old man had a bunch of his live albums from the '70s and '80s taped, which got a fair hammering in our household. Basically, Billy Connolly taught me to swear. There is nothing on Earth, if not the Universe, funnier than agitated swearing in a Glaswegian accent. And if ye done like it ye can fuck off Jimmeh. Getting out videos of his live performances - an achievement in itself as we didn't even have a VCR until mid 1991 so we usually had to hire that as well - was always a highlight. One of his best routines was on the dubiously named 'Wreck On Tour' (mid Eighties I think) live album which started with a long diatribe about the sorts of people who should swear and the sorts who shouldn't. "The Pope," he said, "he should swear. Probably feels like it kissin' all those fuckin' runways. 'Don't you people ever sweep this fuckin' thing?' He should swear. Maybe he does. Says it in Latin and nobody notices." That's still the single funniest audio recording I've ever heard. Go find it on Amazon or something and buy it now. Now I tells ya.
There was a routine I saw one New Years at home (long before drinking age) he did about incontinence which could literally make you piss your pants. There was his version of Tammy Wynette's D.I.V.O.R.C.E. which went to number one in the UK (probably on the basis of his reference to his wife calling him an F-ing C). And even as recently as his World Tour of Scotland (OK that's twelve years ago now) he did a bit about his old man trying to buy a prescription windscreen for his Robin Reliant which placed me in physical pain through laughing. Even though now he's old, and grey, and doing ING commercials - not doing them a lot of good judging by the fact they've posted their first ever quarterly loss, just the 478 million Euros or so - he'll still sell out the entire country (marrying one of the locals probably helped his NZ profile a bit).
Anyway it's gotta be better than the last stand-up I saw. Wil Anderson at Livid about six or seven years back. He was off chops on go-fast, babbled incoherently, foamed at the mouth and even fucked up his very old, very tired 'Kieren Perkins has his name on his milk' routine. When you're even getting fired from Triple M, you're fucked. Then again there was the Pizza live show at the Festy Hall - last show there ever before they built a Borders and a stack of Oaks serviced apartments on it - which was pretty much carried around on the back of Tahir Bilgic (aka Habib), the only decent stand-up amongst the cast.
So I may be the youngest person in the building on Feb 4 at the Regent, and he may be as old and wobbly and pretty-much-past-it as AC/DC, but to be fair Billy Connolly is as much a part of my remembrances of growing up as AC/DC were. Who are also touring again soon. Time to get the lads together p'raps...
The Doctor is OUT.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Thursday, November 06, 2008
End of an era
No, not Dubya and the 'Publicans getting New Broomed into irrelevance by Obama. Nothing as small-scale as that, by criminy. I type at you this afternoon regarding the end of an era much, much more significant in the history of stuff.
Chateau Dodgy Mark One is no more.
It has ceased to be, gone to meet its maker, rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. Chateau Dodgy I, not to put too fine a point on it, is an ex-sharehouse. What is is, as of my touring past its former location at 60 Hawken Drive an hour ago, is a construction site. And that's very, very sad. Black armband, flags-at-half-mast sad. Ahh, the memories. If only I still had any. Like the '60s, if you can remember it, you probably weren't there.
Chateau Dodgy I was of a rare breed of St Lucia sharehouses - rare in this decade of slap-dash 2bdr apartments for Africa - in that it was pretty much your archetypal, Felafel-style decrepit Queenslander with all the mod cons expected by anyone who has read Mr Birmingham's 1994 treatise on the subject. Old mango tree shedding its contents over the driveway. Three bedrooms in various states of disrepair. Batshit insano female flatmate incapable of maintaining continuous gainful employment, relationships with men, relationships with humans of any sort, or any fair share of housework, billpaying and/or grocery shopping. Kitchen best characterized as biohazardous. Enormous back deck with a view of the backyard that can only be described as stellar. (Literally. The backyard was largely taken up by a stand-alone flat inhabited by Stella, a statuesque late-twenties/early thirties blonde who drove an old Merc and had a penchant for getting changed with the French doors open.) Old fireplace perfect for winter, and in particular perfect for winter fireside seductions while the other Dodgites were out for the night (and it probably would have been even better had I actually bothered to get some firewood in before the girl in question dropped around.)
It was, in brief, magnificent. And now it's a large hole filled with construction shit. It looks like it's going to be replaced by another house, rather than yet another soulless, identikit block of flats, which I suppose should leave me thankful for small mercies. But I ain't. The new owners - invariably rich twunts - can't begin to appreciate that place like we did. Just the little things, like the fact it was on the bus route to pretty much anywhere, or the front step was the perfect vantage point for watching summer afternoon thunderstorms rolling in over the west, or the bottle shop two hundred yards up the road which almost always had something or other on special (and by on special I mean less than a buck a beer for carton price - this was the year 2000 after all. You can't even get Tasman Bitter for that anymore.) No real surprise then that erstwhile flatmate Craigos put on six kilos in the first month after I moved in. Between the $23-a-carton XXXX Draught and the endless swathes of Pizza Caffe lovin' it's amazing we both didn't end up looking like Mark Viduka on a pies-only diet. Or at least he didn't.
Of course, it wasn't all beer and skittles, or beer and corridor cricket at least. There were thunderclouds of our own on our doorstep... primarily of the batshit insano variety, as previously foreshadowed. The only reason there ended up being a vacancy at Chateau Dodgy I in the first place, at the time I moved up to Brisvegas, was that an old school mate of Craigos' (that's an old mate of his from school, not a mate who was strictly Old School) who'd signed on to live there with Craigos and Batshit Insano Chick managed to last pretty much one month before packing up his van and running for the hills. He was a tradie, had his shit together, dealt with people for a living, had spent time overseas, could pretty much deal with most things thrown his way. He lasted thirty days before deciding he'd rather spend the rest of his life in Woombah than another hour in the company of Batshit Insano Chick. Methinks that should have been the mildest of indicative precursors as to how things were going to turn out.
Then again, while Batshit Insano Chick was pretty much useless when it came to taking the bins out, paying her share of the phone bill or even holding down a rational conversation, she was half-decent at one thing. No, not that, you disgusting reprobates. (I wasn't the one who declared very loudly, very late one night that he wanted to pound her in the... actually let's not get into that. The gentleman in question is a medical professional now and could do without the besmirchment of his reputation.) Batshit Insano Chick was international best-practice at getting monumental volumes of absolute randoms to turn up to our self-evidently epic house parties, being as though she knew a lot of people even more batshit insano than herself (an achievement in itself). Stuff happened at those things. There were firetwirlers in the backyard, spitting sparks into the tinder-dry garden remnants... Super Soaker wars in the front yard... Catholic schoolgirls and reformed Goth chicks... phone books used as projectiles... jello shots used as wallpaper... and one memorable evening, an entire kebab shop set up on our back deck.
Good times.
60 Hawken Drive is now a yuppie project home under construction, but Chateau Dodgy I died long before, of course. It truly died when the place was sold out from underneath us by Doug Dickhead Real Estate, with the assertion that the new owners wouldn't be interested in leasing it to the scummy likes of us. When the new owners' property manager (tellingly, not from Doug Dickhead's lot) got in touch, as Craigos and I were preparing to sign the lease for Chateau Dodgy v2.0, it was belatedly made clear that stable tenants were one of the major attractions. Obviously they hadn't meant our rather unstable other tenant, but the key thing was, they still wanted us. Unfortunately they wanted us at the increased rate of $280 a week; we'd been paying $240. Stupidly, we blew them off. We didn't have a third party to join us at that time, regardless of what windy waftings we were hearing from various mates on the North Coast about finally moving up (we're still waiting, lads) and we thought the increase was nothing less than gouging. Given we ended up paying $230 between two at version 2.0, and that in seeking a replacement third Dodgite, even taking the randomest of randoms, we couldn't have ended up with anyone more random than Batshit Insano Chick... it seems like we might have erred.
So vale, Chateau Dodgy Mark One.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember you.
And at the end of the day, I go to bed.
The Doctor is OUT (to go see if they've run a bulldozer through Hiron St as well.)
Chateau Dodgy Mark One is no more.
It has ceased to be, gone to meet its maker, rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. Chateau Dodgy I, not to put too fine a point on it, is an ex-sharehouse. What is is, as of my touring past its former location at 60 Hawken Drive an hour ago, is a construction site. And that's very, very sad. Black armband, flags-at-half-mast sad. Ahh, the memories. If only I still had any. Like the '60s, if you can remember it, you probably weren't there.
Chateau Dodgy I was of a rare breed of St Lucia sharehouses - rare in this decade of slap-dash 2bdr apartments for Africa - in that it was pretty much your archetypal, Felafel-style decrepit Queenslander with all the mod cons expected by anyone who has read Mr Birmingham's 1994 treatise on the subject. Old mango tree shedding its contents over the driveway. Three bedrooms in various states of disrepair. Batshit insano female flatmate incapable of maintaining continuous gainful employment, relationships with men, relationships with humans of any sort, or any fair share of housework, billpaying and/or grocery shopping. Kitchen best characterized as biohazardous. Enormous back deck with a view of the backyard that can only be described as stellar. (Literally. The backyard was largely taken up by a stand-alone flat inhabited by Stella, a statuesque late-twenties/early thirties blonde who drove an old Merc and had a penchant for getting changed with the French doors open.) Old fireplace perfect for winter, and in particular perfect for winter fireside seductions while the other Dodgites were out for the night (and it probably would have been even better had I actually bothered to get some firewood in before the girl in question dropped around.)
It was, in brief, magnificent. And now it's a large hole filled with construction shit. It looks like it's going to be replaced by another house, rather than yet another soulless, identikit block of flats, which I suppose should leave me thankful for small mercies. But I ain't. The new owners - invariably rich twunts - can't begin to appreciate that place like we did. Just the little things, like the fact it was on the bus route to pretty much anywhere, or the front step was the perfect vantage point for watching summer afternoon thunderstorms rolling in over the west, or the bottle shop two hundred yards up the road which almost always had something or other on special (and by on special I mean less than a buck a beer for carton price - this was the year 2000 after all. You can't even get Tasman Bitter for that anymore.) No real surprise then that erstwhile flatmate Craigos put on six kilos in the first month after I moved in. Between the $23-a-carton XXXX Draught and the endless swathes of Pizza Caffe lovin' it's amazing we both didn't end up looking like Mark Viduka on a pies-only diet. Or at least he didn't.
Of course, it wasn't all beer and skittles, or beer and corridor cricket at least. There were thunderclouds of our own on our doorstep... primarily of the batshit insano variety, as previously foreshadowed. The only reason there ended up being a vacancy at Chateau Dodgy I in the first place, at the time I moved up to Brisvegas, was that an old school mate of Craigos' (that's an old mate of his from school, not a mate who was strictly Old School) who'd signed on to live there with Craigos and Batshit Insano Chick managed to last pretty much one month before packing up his van and running for the hills. He was a tradie, had his shit together, dealt with people for a living, had spent time overseas, could pretty much deal with most things thrown his way. He lasted thirty days before deciding he'd rather spend the rest of his life in Woombah than another hour in the company of Batshit Insano Chick. Methinks that should have been the mildest of indicative precursors as to how things were going to turn out.
Then again, while Batshit Insano Chick was pretty much useless when it came to taking the bins out, paying her share of the phone bill or even holding down a rational conversation, she was half-decent at one thing. No, not that, you disgusting reprobates. (I wasn't the one who declared very loudly, very late one night that he wanted to pound her in the... actually let's not get into that. The gentleman in question is a medical professional now and could do without the besmirchment of his reputation.) Batshit Insano Chick was international best-practice at getting monumental volumes of absolute randoms to turn up to our self-evidently epic house parties, being as though she knew a lot of people even more batshit insano than herself (an achievement in itself). Stuff happened at those things. There were firetwirlers in the backyard, spitting sparks into the tinder-dry garden remnants... Super Soaker wars in the front yard... Catholic schoolgirls and reformed Goth chicks... phone books used as projectiles... jello shots used as wallpaper... and one memorable evening, an entire kebab shop set up on our back deck.
Good times.
60 Hawken Drive is now a yuppie project home under construction, but Chateau Dodgy I died long before, of course. It truly died when the place was sold out from underneath us by Doug Dickhead Real Estate, with the assertion that the new owners wouldn't be interested in leasing it to the scummy likes of us. When the new owners' property manager (tellingly, not from Doug Dickhead's lot) got in touch, as Craigos and I were preparing to sign the lease for Chateau Dodgy v2.0, it was belatedly made clear that stable tenants were one of the major attractions. Obviously they hadn't meant our rather unstable other tenant, but the key thing was, they still wanted us. Unfortunately they wanted us at the increased rate of $280 a week; we'd been paying $240. Stupidly, we blew them off. We didn't have a third party to join us at that time, regardless of what windy waftings we were hearing from various mates on the North Coast about finally moving up (we're still waiting, lads) and we thought the increase was nothing less than gouging. Given we ended up paying $230 between two at version 2.0, and that in seeking a replacement third Dodgite, even taking the randomest of randoms, we couldn't have ended up with anyone more random than Batshit Insano Chick... it seems like we might have erred.
So vale, Chateau Dodgy Mark One.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember you.
And at the end of the day, I go to bed.
The Doctor is OUT (to go see if they've run a bulldozer through Hiron St as well.)
Sunday, November 02, 2008
(Green and) Gold Coast Indy
Helio Castroneves is used to close shaves. He's Brazilian. Despite having won the Indy 500 a couple of times, he's probably more famous for another career victory which doesn't figure on his racing CV - winning the US version of Dancing With The Stars, which means that even Seppos who wouldn't know an Indycar from Indiana Jones (note: one is wrinklier) know who he is. Helio had a shit weekend last week, flying halfway around the world to finish a lap down and approximately nowhere in the first Gold Coast Indy to actually feature 'Indy' cars for about thirteen years, while his teammate won the thing. Helio will probably have a lot more shit weekends to come, however, given that the Feds have indicted him on multimillion dollar tax evasion charges. His trademark 'Spiderman' victory celebration is unlikely to translate well to his probable new digs, given that the fences he's accustomed to climbing aren't usually electrified and topped with razor wire.
However, while Helio had a shit weekend, his was not the shittest weekend of all at the Indy. That went to ludicrously named local lad Will Power, who for the third Gold Coast event in succession, put the thing on pole; and for the third Gold Coast event in succession, proceeded to fuck his shit right up, inexplicably finding a wall to munt his 'Team Australia' (urrgh) car into while leading the field on lap 16. Will Power is not terribly bright. Will Power is from Toowoomba. Instead, the honour of being the first Australian ever to win the Gold Coast Indy went to Ryan Briscoe of Penske, who held off 2008 series champion and Indy 500 winner, Kiwi Scott Dixon (who the American commentators were unwisely describing as 'Australian-born Scott Dixon' - which, while factual, would get 'em a lynchin' in the Shakies). Briscoe has had a fairly shit career - dumped from the Toyota F1 test team, seriously injured in a car-splitting fireball endo in his first season in Indycars, left to try and rebuild his career in sportscars with Penske's Porsche team. Even earlier this year there were questions raised about how long it'd be before Penske fired him from the Indycar team, but a couple of wins sorted that - in the end, he outscored his mate from Internal Revenue by three wins to one, and if Dixon hadn't spun under yellow like a hammer-thumbed arsewit and taken them both out at Watkins Glen, it could well have been four.
The main benefactor of an Aussie finally winning at the Gold Coast, other than the Aussie in question, is the event itself. Following the shotgun reunification of the Indycar and Champcar series, this year's race was a non-championship event (the late-September Chicago oval event has series-concluding status written into its contract), about which serious doubts were cast re participation of the marquee teams. In the end all came, all saw and one conquered. The problem re continuing participation of the Indys in the Indy isn't about the season-ending issue any more though - it's about the Indy peeps wanting to buddy the race up with the Japan event, and the Queenslanders (whose strings are being pulled by the V8 supremos) objecting to most of the alternative dates as they clashed with AFL finals and whatnot. As usual, it's V8 boss Cockhead Cochrane who's making the biggest arse of himself over this, slagging off the Indycar people, the proposed replacement series A1GP (which to be fair, is losing money faster than your average high-exposure investment fund) and coming out with the diabolically daft suggestion that the Qld government seek to sign the German DTM touring car series as a replacement, seeing as though they won't buy into his vision of the event becoming V8s only. Cockhead is power-mad and delusional, particularly after the NSW gummint finally bent over re his long standing wish to see multicoloured taxis lapping the Olympic precinct, but the delusion clearly doesn't extend to taking into consideration the following facts:
(a) the Indy absolutely has to have a high-end open-wheel racing series as its centrepoint, if only for the glamour stakes, otherwise it's no more than the Clipsal 500 Mark Two; German taxis alternating with Australian taxis ain't cutting it, and
(b) despite Cockhead's cockiness, the DTM boys will make his show look very fucking ordinary. They are proper race cars, with proper race drivers. No sign of anyone called Winterbottom in here.
Anyway, that was dull, I know, but we'll try harder next time.
The Doctor is OUT.
However, while Helio had a shit weekend, his was not the shittest weekend of all at the Indy. That went to ludicrously named local lad Will Power, who for the third Gold Coast event in succession, put the thing on pole; and for the third Gold Coast event in succession, proceeded to fuck his shit right up, inexplicably finding a wall to munt his 'Team Australia' (urrgh) car into while leading the field on lap 16. Will Power is not terribly bright. Will Power is from Toowoomba. Instead, the honour of being the first Australian ever to win the Gold Coast Indy went to Ryan Briscoe of Penske, who held off 2008 series champion and Indy 500 winner, Kiwi Scott Dixon (who the American commentators were unwisely describing as 'Australian-born Scott Dixon' - which, while factual, would get 'em a lynchin' in the Shakies). Briscoe has had a fairly shit career - dumped from the Toyota F1 test team, seriously injured in a car-splitting fireball endo in his first season in Indycars, left to try and rebuild his career in sportscars with Penske's Porsche team. Even earlier this year there were questions raised about how long it'd be before Penske fired him from the Indycar team, but a couple of wins sorted that - in the end, he outscored his mate from Internal Revenue by three wins to one, and if Dixon hadn't spun under yellow like a hammer-thumbed arsewit and taken them both out at Watkins Glen, it could well have been four.
The main benefactor of an Aussie finally winning at the Gold Coast, other than the Aussie in question, is the event itself. Following the shotgun reunification of the Indycar and Champcar series, this year's race was a non-championship event (the late-September Chicago oval event has series-concluding status written into its contract), about which serious doubts were cast re participation of the marquee teams. In the end all came, all saw and one conquered. The problem re continuing participation of the Indys in the Indy isn't about the season-ending issue any more though - it's about the Indy peeps wanting to buddy the race up with the Japan event, and the Queenslanders (whose strings are being pulled by the V8 supremos) objecting to most of the alternative dates as they clashed with AFL finals and whatnot. As usual, it's V8 boss Cockhead Cochrane who's making the biggest arse of himself over this, slagging off the Indycar people, the proposed replacement series A1GP (which to be fair, is losing money faster than your average high-exposure investment fund) and coming out with the diabolically daft suggestion that the Qld government seek to sign the German DTM touring car series as a replacement, seeing as though they won't buy into his vision of the event becoming V8s only. Cockhead is power-mad and delusional, particularly after the NSW gummint finally bent over re his long standing wish to see multicoloured taxis lapping the Olympic precinct, but the delusion clearly doesn't extend to taking into consideration the following facts:
(a) the Indy absolutely has to have a high-end open-wheel racing series as its centrepoint, if only for the glamour stakes, otherwise it's no more than the Clipsal 500 Mark Two; German taxis alternating with Australian taxis ain't cutting it, and
(b) despite Cockhead's cockiness, the DTM boys will make his show look very fucking ordinary. They are proper race cars, with proper race drivers. No sign of anyone called Winterbottom in here.
Anyway, that was dull, I know, but we'll try harder next time.
The Doctor is OUT.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Big Red Car, we like to ride. And by 'ride' I mean 'hit with a hammer'.
Firstly, let's get this out of the way nice and early. Yes, I'm now on Arsebook. Yes, I realise how much of a total fucking hypocrite that makes me. No, I don't give a rancid set of bollocks. We move on.
Hell, it has become clear to me, is being trapped in a room with a singing Wiggles 'Big Red Car' which alternately, tinnily and endlessly blares the first twelve bars of either 'Toot Toot Chugga Chugga, Big Red Car' or 'Big Red Car, We Like To Ride' at serenity-obliterating dB. (Learn your future and weep, up-the-duff types.) Civil aviation law probably prohibits me from inflicting such a fate on the other passengers on Monday's trans-tasman Pac Blue flight into Sin City, on the basis that it's an act of terrorism. Which just leaves several hours of A320-bound dullness to try and entertain an energetic 20 month old kid whose favourite things in the world - climbing on stuff, falling off stuff and complaining about it, squealing loud enough to pierce eardrums - will be effectively off limits for the duration, which will frustrate both him and the mild ADD he inherited from his old man. Fortunately, one of his other favourite things in the world, flirting with waitresses, air hosties and other attractive girls in service industry professions (something else inherited from his old man) will be no problem at all - it is a Pac Blue flight after all. The Air NZ flight home in a fortnight might be more problematic as the national carrier appears to be a retirement home for old hosties.
One of the best things about having a kid, apart from the kid, and being able to flirt vicariously with air hostesses, is the excuse it gives you to ramble through toy stores pretending you're looking for something for them, rather than yourself. And building massive go-away downhill racetracks from sticking all the ramps, petrol stations and parking lots together with cheap-arse gaffa tape bought in bulk from Mitre 10 Mega and seeing how fast the thing can get by the sweeping downhill left-hander (a.k.a. the carwash offramp) before the big jump over Teddy and Wags the Dog. Occasionally I even let Lucas have a go, which is probably good for his personal development. So far, our extensive vehicle testing programme, carried out under the most rigorous of scientific parameters, has demonstrated the following:
- Mega Bloks' Tiny 'N' Tuff cars look cool as shit, but have bugger all ground clearance and bottom out on serious surface transitions
- Playskool stuff is more top heavy than Pamela Anderson on a penny farthing; corners best avoided
- Unless on their poxy dedicated track, Thomas the Tank Engine trains understeer like pigs on greased lino
- Mummy needs to buy us more cars
- And more track
But, of course, experiments are continuing. We'll keep you posted on our findings.
The Doctor is OUT.
Hell, it has become clear to me, is being trapped in a room with a singing Wiggles 'Big Red Car' which alternately, tinnily and endlessly blares the first twelve bars of either 'Toot Toot Chugga Chugga, Big Red Car' or 'Big Red Car, We Like To Ride' at serenity-obliterating dB. (Learn your future and weep, up-the-duff types.) Civil aviation law probably prohibits me from inflicting such a fate on the other passengers on Monday's trans-tasman Pac Blue flight into Sin City, on the basis that it's an act of terrorism. Which just leaves several hours of A320-bound dullness to try and entertain an energetic 20 month old kid whose favourite things in the world - climbing on stuff, falling off stuff and complaining about it, squealing loud enough to pierce eardrums - will be effectively off limits for the duration, which will frustrate both him and the mild ADD he inherited from his old man. Fortunately, one of his other favourite things in the world, flirting with waitresses, air hosties and other attractive girls in service industry professions (something else inherited from his old man) will be no problem at all - it is a Pac Blue flight after all. The Air NZ flight home in a fortnight might be more problematic as the national carrier appears to be a retirement home for old hosties.
One of the best things about having a kid, apart from the kid, and being able to flirt vicariously with air hostesses, is the excuse it gives you to ramble through toy stores pretending you're looking for something for them, rather than yourself. And building massive go-away downhill racetracks from sticking all the ramps, petrol stations and parking lots together with cheap-arse gaffa tape bought in bulk from Mitre 10 Mega and seeing how fast the thing can get by the sweeping downhill left-hander (a.k.a. the carwash offramp) before the big jump over Teddy and Wags the Dog. Occasionally I even let Lucas have a go, which is probably good for his personal development. So far, our extensive vehicle testing programme, carried out under the most rigorous of scientific parameters, has demonstrated the following:
- Mega Bloks' Tiny 'N' Tuff cars look cool as shit, but have bugger all ground clearance and bottom out on serious surface transitions
- Playskool stuff is more top heavy than Pamela Anderson on a penny farthing; corners best avoided
- Unless on their poxy dedicated track, Thomas the Tank Engine trains understeer like pigs on greased lino- Mummy needs to buy us more cars
- And more track
But, of course, experiments are continuing. We'll keep you posted on our findings.
The Doctor is OUT.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Football, meat pies, Kangaroos and Holden cars
The footy jumpers have been packed away, the maroon-and-white balloons and streamers have been taken down, half the Manly side is in the Kangaroos squad (and the other half's in the Kiwis), and the Melbourne Rain Depression are busy having their medical staff inspect the new hole in their arse they got torn on Sunday evening. Thanks to the birds of prey, the footy (as distinct from football) season is over, which can only mean one thing. Yes, it's Bathurst Beer Bingo time again.
Naysayers and gimlet-eyed fun-police types have long railed against the glorious exposition of stupidity and exploration of constitution that the '3B' entails. They say it's pointless, that it's utterly without merit, that it glorifies the abuse of alcohol. I say... yup. It is. It's hammering the piss for seven hours watching taxis circulating around a drought-affected hillside in central-western NSW. Your point being?
Bathurst - the race, not the excuse for pissing it up like bastards that it provides - has itself been accused of similar dubiousity. In the race's past, through its various naming rights sponsors, it's been accused of glorifying immoral and unsavoury activities like abusing alcohol (Tooheys), smoking cigarettes, particularly obscure Irish ones (Gallagher), smoking brake pads (Hardie-Ferodo), sending insurance agencies broke because you're a clueless fucktard, Rodney (FAI), and giving your employees mesothelioma (James Hardie). Currently, the race is sponsored by purveyor of nasty plastic goods parallel-imported from China and still whiffing of melamine, SuperCheapAuto, whose major crime against society is their continuing employment of aging irrelevance Rusty Ringpull as 'The Enforcer' in their once-funny TV ads. (Though that one time he gives the guy in the old Lancer a Dirty Sanchez is still gold. Fact.)
With that said, we can now unveil this year's edition of the 3B Rules Of Engagement.
The Drink
The Drink is defined as both the liquid content of the Vessel (q.v.) and the act of imbibing said vessel in a unit volume generally corresponding to a minor event of interest or intrigue in the Race. The World of Bollocks recommends Speights, Pride of the South for over 130 years.
The Vessel
The Vessel is defined as both the drinking container, and a unit volume of Drink to be consumed in the event of a more significant incident or instance unfolding in the Race, or just in the Local Vicinity of the Pissheads. The World of Bollocks recommends the standard NZ seven-ounce (200mL) beer glass as provided by most public houses in conjunction with the purchase of bulk volumes of beer. If using a ten-ounce (285mL, aka pot or middy), you should be a'ight but take small sips after half-race. If using a schooner or pint, you may find you are utterly fucked by the first pitstops.
The Race
The Race is defined as the 2008 SuperCheapAuto Bathurst 1000, for those terminally fucking slow on the uptake. Get with it, Palinistas.
The Object of the Mo'fo'ing Exercise, Dawg
The Race is a Race of Endurance. Hence, the Object of the Mo'fo'ing Exercise is to survive for the entire duration of the event, from green light to chequered flag, and still make work on Monday.
The Rules
Drink-Worthy Incidents
The following incidents have a priori been determined worthy of a Drink in the 2008 running of Bathurst Beer Bingo:
* Gratuitous pre-race shots of grid girls (unless minging)
* Channel Seven cutting to an ad break as soon as something interesting happens
* Replays of minor spins, overshoots, lawnmowing adventures, sandpit action or inter-car nerfage (not resulting in a Safety Car)
* Any crowd shots showing total and utter snaggle-toothed bogan fucktards looking like extras from Deliverance
* Neil Crompton busting out the 3D walk-thru CAD stuff for no apparent reason whatsoever
* Rusty giving that bloke the Dirty Sanchez (gold, I'm telling you)
* Channel Seven tossing on about how they invented Racecam (like Al Gore invented the internet)
* New in-car camera footage from any angle so obscure you can't figure out where or how the fuck they managed to get the thing to stay on, and why they bothered
* Random, gratuitous, unnecessary sponsorship of stuff eg KFC Zinger replay, Armor All race update, Medibank Private accident report, Acme Urinal Cake slashers break
Vessel-Worthy Incidents
You will be required to drain the contents of your vessel into your fat piehole on occasion of the following taking place before thee:
* The start of the race, scheduled for 1030 hours AEST. If your religion forbids you from knocking one back before the sun is over the yardarm (or even before midday), change your religion. Enough with the fairy stories and superstition people, we're civilised human beings
* Channel Seven busting out some utterly ridiculous new camera angle (eg BrascoCam, which follows Greg Murphy into the portaloo when he's having a sulk)
* The declaration of a Safety Car period
* The continuation of any Safety Car period beyond ten laps
* Neil Crompton breathlessly declaring that all anyone is doing in the first part of the race is 'buying a ticket to the last 30 laps' (note this will probably be downgraded to 'Drink' status after the first dozen occurrences)
* Confirmed sightings of any of the following being employed upon race entries in pitlane:
- duct tape
- slide hammer
- sledge hammer
- disproportionate amounts of violence
* When it absolutely fuckin' pisses down mid-race
* When it stops
* Any of the commentary team leaving their cellphone on
* Any of the commentary team not calling it the SuperCheapAuto Bathurst 1000, or similar sponsor-abandoning faux pas
* Any of the preening overpaid taxi drivers whinging about traffic (fuck's sake lads, there's only thirty-odd taxis out there, back in the day there was sixty cars across several classes of glacialness)
* Dick Johnson or someone from Brad Jones' team having a whinge in a pit lane interview
* Any time an in-car or on-car camera gets Fucked Up by driving into stuff
* On occasion that someone from The Other Side fucks up royally and makes a race-terminating cock of themselves, eg Lowndes spinning off for Holden fans, or HRT #1 dropping its guts up Mountain Straight on lap 1 for the Fraudulators. Note that unaligned parties are strongly encouraged to pick a side and man the fuck up, or they're drinking whenever it goes pear-shaped for ANY BASTARD.
Penalty Vessels
The following are individual punishments of a Vessel, to be self-administered to any member of your party who commits the following acts of naivety or ignorance:
* Giggling whenever anyone mentions 'Winterbottom'
* Disrespecting the new Brocky statue by pointing out it looks like the one of King Wally Lewis with a bad hairpiece (well, worse than the one he actually has)
* Liking Craig Lowndes
* Not getting their fucking round in
* Bringing food (unless they brought enough for everyone)
* Bringing girls (unless they brought enough for everyone)
Good luck, good hunting, and may the best Holden win.
The Doctor is OUT (to get the Powerades in for Sunday night)
Naysayers and gimlet-eyed fun-police types have long railed against the glorious exposition of stupidity and exploration of constitution that the '3B' entails. They say it's pointless, that it's utterly without merit, that it glorifies the abuse of alcohol. I say... yup. It is. It's hammering the piss for seven hours watching taxis circulating around a drought-affected hillside in central-western NSW. Your point being?
Bathurst - the race, not the excuse for pissing it up like bastards that it provides - has itself been accused of similar dubiousity. In the race's past, through its various naming rights sponsors, it's been accused of glorifying immoral and unsavoury activities like abusing alcohol (Tooheys), smoking cigarettes, particularly obscure Irish ones (Gallagher), smoking brake pads (Hardie-Ferodo), sending insurance agencies broke because you're a clueless fucktard, Rodney (FAI), and giving your employees mesothelioma (James Hardie). Currently, the race is sponsored by purveyor of nasty plastic goods parallel-imported from China and still whiffing of melamine, SuperCheapAuto, whose major crime against society is their continuing employment of aging irrelevance Rusty Ringpull as 'The Enforcer' in their once-funny TV ads. (Though that one time he gives the guy in the old Lancer a Dirty Sanchez is still gold. Fact.)
With that said, we can now unveil this year's edition of the 3B Rules Of Engagement.
The Drink
The Drink is defined as both the liquid content of the Vessel (q.v.) and the act of imbibing said vessel in a unit volume generally corresponding to a minor event of interest or intrigue in the Race. The World of Bollocks recommends Speights, Pride of the South for over 130 years.
The Vessel
The Vessel is defined as both the drinking container, and a unit volume of Drink to be consumed in the event of a more significant incident or instance unfolding in the Race, or just in the Local Vicinity of the Pissheads. The World of Bollocks recommends the standard NZ seven-ounce (200mL) beer glass as provided by most public houses in conjunction with the purchase of bulk volumes of beer. If using a ten-ounce (285mL, aka pot or middy), you should be a'ight but take small sips after half-race. If using a schooner or pint, you may find you are utterly fucked by the first pitstops.
The Race
The Race is defined as the 2008 SuperCheapAuto Bathurst 1000, for those terminally fucking slow on the uptake. Get with it, Palinistas.
The Object of the Mo'fo'ing Exercise, Dawg
The Race is a Race of Endurance. Hence, the Object of the Mo'fo'ing Exercise is to survive for the entire duration of the event, from green light to chequered flag, and still make work on Monday.
The Rules
Drink-Worthy Incidents
The following incidents have a priori been determined worthy of a Drink in the 2008 running of Bathurst Beer Bingo:
* Gratuitous pre-race shots of grid girls (unless minging)
* Channel Seven cutting to an ad break as soon as something interesting happens
* Replays of minor spins, overshoots, lawnmowing adventures, sandpit action or inter-car nerfage (not resulting in a Safety Car)
* Any crowd shots showing total and utter snaggle-toothed bogan fucktards looking like extras from Deliverance
* Neil Crompton busting out the 3D walk-thru CAD stuff for no apparent reason whatsoever
* Rusty giving that bloke the Dirty Sanchez (gold, I'm telling you)
* Channel Seven tossing on about how they invented Racecam (like Al Gore invented the internet)
* New in-car camera footage from any angle so obscure you can't figure out where or how the fuck they managed to get the thing to stay on, and why they bothered
* Random, gratuitous, unnecessary sponsorship of stuff eg KFC Zinger replay, Armor All race update, Medibank Private accident report, Acme Urinal Cake slashers break
Vessel-Worthy Incidents
You will be required to drain the contents of your vessel into your fat piehole on occasion of the following taking place before thee:
* The start of the race, scheduled for 1030 hours AEST. If your religion forbids you from knocking one back before the sun is over the yardarm (or even before midday), change your religion. Enough with the fairy stories and superstition people, we're civilised human beings
* Channel Seven busting out some utterly ridiculous new camera angle (eg BrascoCam, which follows Greg Murphy into the portaloo when he's having a sulk)
* The declaration of a Safety Car period
* The continuation of any Safety Car period beyond ten laps
* Neil Crompton breathlessly declaring that all anyone is doing in the first part of the race is 'buying a ticket to the last 30 laps' (note this will probably be downgraded to 'Drink' status after the first dozen occurrences)
* Confirmed sightings of any of the following being employed upon race entries in pitlane:
- duct tape
- slide hammer
- sledge hammer
- disproportionate amounts of violence
* When it absolutely fuckin' pisses down mid-race
* When it stops
* Any of the commentary team leaving their cellphone on
* Any of the commentary team not calling it the SuperCheapAuto Bathurst 1000, or similar sponsor-abandoning faux pas
* Any of the preening overpaid taxi drivers whinging about traffic (fuck's sake lads, there's only thirty-odd taxis out there, back in the day there was sixty cars across several classes of glacialness)
* Dick Johnson or someone from Brad Jones' team having a whinge in a pit lane interview
* Any time an in-car or on-car camera gets Fucked Up by driving into stuff
* On occasion that someone from The Other Side fucks up royally and makes a race-terminating cock of themselves, eg Lowndes spinning off for Holden fans, or HRT #1 dropping its guts up Mountain Straight on lap 1 for the Fraudulators. Note that unaligned parties are strongly encouraged to pick a side and man the fuck up, or they're drinking whenever it goes pear-shaped for ANY BASTARD.
Penalty Vessels
The following are individual punishments of a Vessel, to be self-administered to any member of your party who commits the following acts of naivety or ignorance:
* Giggling whenever anyone mentions 'Winterbottom'
* Disrespecting the new Brocky statue by pointing out it looks like the one of King Wally Lewis with a bad hairpiece (well, worse than the one he actually has)
* Liking Craig Lowndes
* Not getting their fucking round in
* Bringing food (unless they brought enough for everyone)
* Bringing girls (unless they brought enough for everyone)
Good luck, good hunting, and may the best Holden win.
The Doctor is OUT (to get the Powerades in for Sunday night)
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
So, um, how about them Broncos?
...And remember when that was what you said to get OUT of awkward conversational situations?
(Most of the following was already said here, but we'll reheat it again this Weak in Sport in a vaguely more coherent fashion in order to sound witty and intelligent.)
Now look, I don't want to tell Supercoach Wayne Bennett how to do his job - he's been doing it, crankily, for 25 years or more, since he was driving the Canberra bus in the late '80s - but maybe, just MAYBE, if Darren Lockyer and the rest of the Broncs were practising their tackling on something more robust than a fairly spindly-looking Swiss-born bar owner at stupid o'clock on Monday morning, maybe there wouldn't have been a two-man overlap on the wing in the last thirty seconds of a sudden death semifinal... I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.
And as for the Alhambra Lounge Three (or was it four?)... if someone can explain to me the fascination among male sporting teams with having sexual intercourse with a lady, consenting or otherwise, as a team bonding exercise, please do, because it absolutely fucking baffles me. From where I stand (well away from the gents, and understandably so) it just seems like latent man-love to me, but best ask the Broncos (or the Bulldogs.)
Still, it'd never happen in union... their players are usually too busy molesting quokkas or busting teammates' jaws for any of that sort of stuff.
It's worth remembering no professional sportsperson actually gets paid to play sport. If their sport is commercially successful enough to be able to support them, their sport is effectively entertainment. Doesn't matter if you're Michael Schumacher, Michael Jordan or Michael Ennis. At most, it's five percent of salary for playing the game, 95% for making money for the owners, sponsors, pay TV rights holders (and of course the MEDIA. In particular the News Ltd media, who OWN the Broncs FFS.) Hence the argument of alleged football intellect and professional dugong impersonator* Phil Gould that no NRL footballer ever signed up to be a role model and therefore is exempt from being one, is complete bollocks, as is Gould himself. If they just wanted to play football and nothing more, there's always the Lower Clarence Magpies in Group 1 of the NSW Country Rugby League. Match fees of half a carton of beer. Players' player gets a meat tray. (Not sure if that counts as permissable third-party payments under the salary cap. Fire-Up-Bitch Gasnier could probably advise on that one.)
The NRL isn't alone here though. I think pretty much any sporting team is capable of the same level of stupidity or reprehensibleness, it's just that NRL players here (see also Premier League footballers in England, NFL and NBA players in the states) have never been called to account for it because noone stands to make any money from them NOT being told the sun shines from their fundament. Rowers, netballers and lawn bowlers (all of which can also put it away a bit) generally don't have that reinforcement structure telling them it's OK to carry on like utter twunts so long as they aim up, step up and put in on the weekend.
So this is not a NRL problem. It's not even a football problem - AFL, ARU, FFA, NFL, EPL or AOFA (Any Other Fucking Acronym). It is a dickhead problem. Highly competitive, driven, selfish, egotistical risktakers make the most successful sportspeople. Highly competitive, driven, selfish, egotistical risktakers are almost always dickheads. Fact. They're genetically selected to be nothing less than total fucking cocks with no socially redeeming qualities whatsoever. In fact the rarity of non-dickheads in professional sport is demonstrated by the acclaim with which they are promoted - think of the column inches the likes of Beaver Menzies get just for being pleasant individuals who are loyal to their employer and aren't committing atrocities on a weekly basis, as though this is something they should be celebrated for.
And when you get a group of World's Best Practice Dickheads in one place, fill them with booze, drugs and ego-fluffing, what do you have? You have the Broncos at Alhambra, the Bulldogs in Coffs Harbour, Joey Johns at the Church, Ben Cousins in Vegas, the WC Eagles pretty much anywhere, Roy going fishing, Punter at the Bourbon and Beefsteak, Man Utd at their infamous Xmas party last year (which made the Alhambra look like Play School) or any given NFL/NBA gameday-morning-after on ESPN Sportscenter. The only real difference is the American scandals usually involve weapons charges as well.
I actually found Pleece Minster Judy Spence's comments the most astonishing part of the whole story. I can accept - wearily - the idea of footballers implicated in sexual assault. I don't like it, but the story's been told so many times on so many continents that it no longer has the power to surprise. The pattern from previous stories seems to be that it never gets to trial, either because the victim doesn't want to be dragged through the publicity storm, there isn't enough evidence beyond he-said (x3) she-said, or they weren't so much of a victim in the first place. What was a surprise was that the fucking Police Minister pleaded with the citizens of the state not to disown the team and not turn up on matchday, and effectively spoke in favour of three (four?) sexual assault perpetrators (and as such against their victim), basically giving the impression it was all just a silly misunderstanding just because three of them needed to go toi-tois at the same time and asked a responsible adult (well, she was 24) to come with them to make sure they didn't fall in, or something. (Anyone else having trouble figuring out how that quartet could have actually FITTED into a nightclub toilet? Must have been the disabled cubicle.) What the hell was that about? Was Spence on for a cut of the gate or something? And seriously, WHAT THE FUCK is the Qld Police Minister doing defending a bunch of potential perps at a fucking press conference? And given how utterly shit the NSW gummint is travelling, is she actually the NSW Police Minister in disguise? (Though to be fair his last disguise sucked the big one.) As far as Police Ministerial Fuckups go, that's a sackable offence, full stop. Much, much more than dancing like a half-naked fucktard in your office should be.
Speaking of which, someone once said 'People get the government they deserve', which is a bit rough on the citizens of Myanmar, China or NSW, but is pretty much on the money in more democratic environs. I reckon people also get the media they deserve. Ask yourself why positive news on league (or on anything else) doesn't sell - why stories about how Matt Bowen, Matt Sing or Dean Widders (got to get a Rabbitoh in there) doing great work in Aboriginal communities get bumped in favour of stories about Money Bill Williams cutting and running** or Julian O'Neill pooing in Schlossy's shoe (another Bunny unfortunately.) It's not like the media is imposing this upon an unwilling population (although league, for reasons unclear, is much better at promoting its shabbier side than the other codes - odd since the media moguls own the code much more than they do any of the others, but that's an argument for another day.) The media report the grubby stuff because people want to hear it, because people are venal, hypocritical gossip-mongering arsewits who'd rather watch a TV news story about the new Bond film or Britney Spears' run-ins with paparazzi than anything vaguely factual or informative (you know, what we used to call 'news'.) It's crap, but it RATES. If it didn't, it wouldn't be on. In a lowest-common-denominator, ratings-driven market, the market gets exactly the product it deserves.
All that said, if Boxhead Bruno Cullen is right and this sort of drunken one-in all-in behaviour is also acceptable among netballers, watch out next time the Qld Firebirds are having a team bonding exercise out on the turps. THAT would make the papers, I'd wager. If not YouTube.
(Most of the following was already said here, but we'll reheat it again this Weak in Sport in a vaguely more coherent fashion in order to sound witty and intelligent.)
Now look, I don't want to tell Supercoach Wayne Bennett how to do his job - he's been doing it, crankily, for 25 years or more, since he was driving the Canberra bus in the late '80s - but maybe, just MAYBE, if Darren Lockyer and the rest of the Broncs were practising their tackling on something more robust than a fairly spindly-looking Swiss-born bar owner at stupid o'clock on Monday morning, maybe there wouldn't have been a two-man overlap on the wing in the last thirty seconds of a sudden death semifinal... I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.
And as for the Alhambra Lounge Three (or was it four?)... if someone can explain to me the fascination among male sporting teams with having sexual intercourse with a lady, consenting or otherwise, as a team bonding exercise, please do, because it absolutely fucking baffles me. From where I stand (well away from the gents, and understandably so) it just seems like latent man-love to me, but best ask the Broncos (or the Bulldogs.)
Still, it'd never happen in union... their players are usually too busy molesting quokkas or busting teammates' jaws for any of that sort of stuff.
It's worth remembering no professional sportsperson actually gets paid to play sport. If their sport is commercially successful enough to be able to support them, their sport is effectively entertainment. Doesn't matter if you're Michael Schumacher, Michael Jordan or Michael Ennis. At most, it's five percent of salary for playing the game, 95% for making money for the owners, sponsors, pay TV rights holders (and of course the MEDIA. In particular the News Ltd media, who OWN the Broncs FFS.) Hence the argument of alleged football intellect and professional dugong impersonator* Phil Gould that no NRL footballer ever signed up to be a role model and therefore is exempt from being one, is complete bollocks, as is Gould himself. If they just wanted to play football and nothing more, there's always the Lower Clarence Magpies in Group 1 of the NSW Country Rugby League. Match fees of half a carton of beer. Players' player gets a meat tray. (Not sure if that counts as permissable third-party payments under the salary cap. Fire-Up-Bitch Gasnier could probably advise on that one.)
The NRL isn't alone here though. I think pretty much any sporting team is capable of the same level of stupidity or reprehensibleness, it's just that NRL players here (see also Premier League footballers in England, NFL and NBA players in the states) have never been called to account for it because noone stands to make any money from them NOT being told the sun shines from their fundament. Rowers, netballers and lawn bowlers (all of which can also put it away a bit) generally don't have that reinforcement structure telling them it's OK to carry on like utter twunts so long as they aim up, step up and put in on the weekend.
So this is not a NRL problem. It's not even a football problem - AFL, ARU, FFA, NFL, EPL or AOFA (Any Other Fucking Acronym). It is a dickhead problem. Highly competitive, driven, selfish, egotistical risktakers make the most successful sportspeople. Highly competitive, driven, selfish, egotistical risktakers are almost always dickheads. Fact. They're genetically selected to be nothing less than total fucking cocks with no socially redeeming qualities whatsoever. In fact the rarity of non-dickheads in professional sport is demonstrated by the acclaim with which they are promoted - think of the column inches the likes of Beaver Menzies get just for being pleasant individuals who are loyal to their employer and aren't committing atrocities on a weekly basis, as though this is something they should be celebrated for.
And when you get a group of World's Best Practice Dickheads in one place, fill them with booze, drugs and ego-fluffing, what do you have? You have the Broncos at Alhambra, the Bulldogs in Coffs Harbour, Joey Johns at the Church, Ben Cousins in Vegas, the WC Eagles pretty much anywhere, Roy going fishing, Punter at the Bourbon and Beefsteak, Man Utd at their infamous Xmas party last year (which made the Alhambra look like Play School) or any given NFL/NBA gameday-morning-after on ESPN Sportscenter. The only real difference is the American scandals usually involve weapons charges as well.
I actually found Pleece Minster Judy Spence's comments the most astonishing part of the whole story. I can accept - wearily - the idea of footballers implicated in sexual assault. I don't like it, but the story's been told so many times on so many continents that it no longer has the power to surprise. The pattern from previous stories seems to be that it never gets to trial, either because the victim doesn't want to be dragged through the publicity storm, there isn't enough evidence beyond he-said (x3) she-said, or they weren't so much of a victim in the first place. What was a surprise was that the fucking Police Minister pleaded with the citizens of the state not to disown the team and not turn up on matchday, and effectively spoke in favour of three (four?) sexual assault perpetrators (and as such against their victim), basically giving the impression it was all just a silly misunderstanding just because three of them needed to go toi-tois at the same time and asked a responsible adult (well, she was 24) to come with them to make sure they didn't fall in, or something. (Anyone else having trouble figuring out how that quartet could have actually FITTED into a nightclub toilet? Must have been the disabled cubicle.) What the hell was that about? Was Spence on for a cut of the gate or something? And seriously, WHAT THE FUCK is the Qld Police Minister doing defending a bunch of potential perps at a fucking press conference? And given how utterly shit the NSW gummint is travelling, is she actually the NSW Police Minister in disguise? (Though to be fair his last disguise sucked the big one.) As far as Police Ministerial Fuckups go, that's a sackable offence, full stop. Much, much more than dancing like a half-naked fucktard in your office should be.
Speaking of which, someone once said 'People get the government they deserve', which is a bit rough on the citizens of Myanmar, China or NSW, but is pretty much on the money in more democratic environs. I reckon people also get the media they deserve. Ask yourself why positive news on league (or on anything else) doesn't sell - why stories about how Matt Bowen, Matt Sing or Dean Widders (got to get a Rabbitoh in there) doing great work in Aboriginal communities get bumped in favour of stories about Money Bill Williams cutting and running** or Julian O'Neill pooing in Schlossy's shoe (another Bunny unfortunately.) It's not like the media is imposing this upon an unwilling population (although league, for reasons unclear, is much better at promoting its shabbier side than the other codes - odd since the media moguls own the code much more than they do any of the others, but that's an argument for another day.) The media report the grubby stuff because people want to hear it, because people are venal, hypocritical gossip-mongering arsewits who'd rather watch a TV news story about the new Bond film or Britney Spears' run-ins with paparazzi than anything vaguely factual or informative (you know, what we used to call 'news'.) It's crap, but it RATES. If it didn't, it wouldn't be on. In a lowest-common-denominator, ratings-driven market, the market gets exactly the product it deserves.
All that said, if Boxhead Bruno Cullen is right and this sort of drunken one-in all-in behaviour is also acceptable among netballers, watch out next time the Qld Firebirds are having a team bonding exercise out on the turps. THAT would make the papers, I'd wager. If not YouTube.
Firebirds: hot
*Not many people know that professional dugong impersonator Phil Gould IS actually a dugong. He was found washed up in the Nepean River near Penrith's training ground in the late '70s, and they figured he looked slow, fat and stupid enough to play in the forwards for the Panthers.
The Choccy Soldiers weren't going that well for frontline grunt and/or poke back in the day.
**Speaking of congenital morons, hope someone saw the quote from the editor of Zoo declaring "Sonny Bill is someone who did something no Australian should do, he ditched his teammates and walked out."
Anyone want to explain to Zoolander that SBW is from Auckland?
The Doctor is OUT like a vaguely decent leaguie en route to the French Top 14 rugby comp.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Something else gone
Today, I discovered an old friend I hadn't seen for nearly ten years.
My chin.
I'm not sure what inspired this particular grooming decision. Call it not wanting to either look my age or act it. Call it a mid (no) life crisis. Or call it three and a half years of being ripped mercilessly for having a ginger beard (NZers are much, MUCH more vicious than Aussies when it comes to sledging gingas.)
Harsh but fair.
But it's not all bad.
Some of it is sloppy as well.
Anyway, it's goooooorrnnne. At least until Movember - presuming (a) it runs over here given the contract dispute and (b) I can actually grow anything resembling convincing facial hair inside a month.
I'm clearer on why I grew the thing in the first place. Mainly so I'd stop getting asked for ID at Liquorland. (I was nearing 21 at the time and it was starting to piss me off. These days I think I'd hug the guy.) It was also some sort of misguided attempt to attract more lovin', given that goatees had been vaguely fashionable for bits of the '90s. And it worked - in the month after growing a beard I got approximately a hundred times as much sex as I'd had in the two months before. (As Benji Disraeli might have said, there are lies, damned lies, statistics, and shit we just made up.)
There are plenty of people I know who have never seen me without a beard. My wife and child, for instance. Lucas giggles convulsively whenever he sees me, so I'm glad everything's still normal there. As for Mrs Dr Mrs Yobbo, I should be able to determine her opinion on the matter just as soon as she stops laughing and moves back into the house from her mother's. Many of you will have also recoiled in horror from the news that I do in fact have a chin, and I apologise unreservedly for having a face like a turtle.
Though it could have been worse.
De Dutch poorn schtar look ish good, yessh?
So who's to blame? The Warriors. As a team, every man has pledged - in honour of retiring great hairy lump Ruben Wiki - to grow beards. Including some who probably shouldn't.
Belted on principle, basically
And the clarification that ginger beards look good on noone - not even thumping great big footballers - finally hit home. Unless you're a geography teacher, don't grow a ginger beard. The end.
The Doctor is OUT.
My chin.
I'm not sure what inspired this particular grooming decision. Call it not wanting to either look my age or act it. Call it a mid (no) life crisis. Or call it three and a half years of being ripped mercilessly for having a ginger beard (NZers are much, MUCH more vicious than Aussies when it comes to sledging gingas.)
Harsh but fair.
But it's not all bad.
Some of it is sloppy as well.
Anyway, it's goooooorrnnne. At least until Movember - presuming (a) it runs over here given the contract dispute and (b) I can actually grow anything resembling convincing facial hair inside a month.
I'm clearer on why I grew the thing in the first place. Mainly so I'd stop getting asked for ID at Liquorland. (I was nearing 21 at the time and it was starting to piss me off. These days I think I'd hug the guy.) It was also some sort of misguided attempt to attract more lovin', given that goatees had been vaguely fashionable for bits of the '90s. And it worked - in the month after growing a beard I got approximately a hundred times as much sex as I'd had in the two months before. (As Benji Disraeli might have said, there are lies, damned lies, statistics, and shit we just made up.)
There are plenty of people I know who have never seen me without a beard. My wife and child, for instance. Lucas giggles convulsively whenever he sees me, so I'm glad everything's still normal there. As for Mrs Dr Mrs Yobbo, I should be able to determine her opinion on the matter just as soon as she stops laughing and moves back into the house from her mother's. Many of you will have also recoiled in horror from the news that I do in fact have a chin, and I apologise unreservedly for having a face like a turtle.
Though it could have been worse.
De Dutch poorn schtar look ish good, yessh?
So who's to blame? The Warriors. As a team, every man has pledged - in honour of retiring great hairy lump Ruben Wiki - to grow beards. Including some who probably shouldn't.
Belted on principle, basically
And the clarification that ginger beards look good on noone - not even thumping great big footballers - finally hit home. Unless you're a geography teacher, don't grow a ginger beard. The end.
The Doctor is OUT.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Me gone
Girls called Megan are hot. Fact. This is an irrefutable, non-negotiable point of law, just as girls called Sharon are buck-toothed slappers and girls called Charmaine are men dressed as ladies. It would appear, then, that the greatest hot-chick name of all time would have to be Megan Fox. It says it all, really. She's a Megan, she's a Fox, The End. It couldn't have been a greater case of nominative determinism (people whose names echo their jobs - it's not that hard to explain thanks very much New Scientist's smug-arsed Feedback section) had she been called Megan Vixen, Megan Jesus Fucking Lord Look At That or Megan Arghhhhh I'm Spent.
Basically, if Megan Fox didn't exist she would need to be invented. And that's just her name. It's wholly appropriate that the actress with the name Megan Fox actually looks like this:
And not like this:
Of course all of the above hinges on the presumption Megan Fox isn't a stage name and her real name is Bernice van Arshlicht or something.
So she's a Megan, and she's a fox, and all is good. She can't act her way out of wet newspaper, but we'd like to see her try anyway. And she's good for a headline, it would seem (and not in any way because it enables lazy subbies to run photos of highly concentrated pouting sultriness next to the story.) A couple of recent Googlegrabs (recent, as in today):
Megan Fox’s sex honesty
Megan Fox open to dating women
Megan Fox films sex scene for zombie flick
Megan Fox reveals affair with female stripper
Megan Fox to keep revealing her sex life
Megan Fox in sex romp with Scarlett Johansson and large tub of Neapolitan icecream
(Note: one of these may have been made up)
So the lesbian stripper story, such as it is, is this. Eighteen year old wannabe-actress moves to Hollywood, breaks up with boyfriend, all alone in big city, decides to start stalking hot Russian stripper from dubiously named gentlemen's establishment (The Body Shop, FFS? Anita Roddick would be spinning in her grave) and has relationship with same. Sorry, that should be has hot, teenage, lesbian relationship with same. I think I got the order right there. And that's all good.
The zombie sex story is regarding her next great role: that of a possessed lesbian zombie cheerleader in something called Jennifer's Body. What else? "I eat and seduce everyone," the actress explained, when quizzed on the intricacies of the plot and of her character's motivations. And of course all great roles need their pivotal scenes - think Citizen Kane on the steps, Dirty Harry on the riverbank, Kenny emptying his septic truck over that guy's convertible - and Jennifer's is... a topless lesbian bump-and-grind bedroom romp with the chick from Mamma Mia. Again I ask, what else?
The unifying theme here seems to be 'Megan Fox likes sex, almost as much as she likes talking loudly about it to entertainment reporters', as illustrated by a third separate story - yes, in a single day - subheadlined '‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’ star Megan Fox has vowed never to stop talking about her sex life, insisting she is not embarrassed to reveal her bedroom antics.'
But this is not the problem with the story, or any of the other stories published on this very Fox-centric day in cyberspace, most of which were bits and pieces taken from a recent GQ interview. No, the problem with the story, and with Megan Fox, is a simple one, but one which forces any normal, well-adjusted individual to draw a line under her and declare, "From you, we will hear no more. Shush, get off the internet, and be gone with thee."
That simple problem is this: she's engaged - yes, engaged, deliberately, on purpose - to this guy.
Yes, it's the dweeby little twink from 90210 with three names and no discernable talent, Brian Austin Green.
This might not prove there is no God, but it certainly proves something else - there's no accounting for fuckin' taste.
The Doctor is OUT.
Basically, if Megan Fox didn't exist she would need to be invented. And that's just her name. It's wholly appropriate that the actress with the name Megan Fox actually looks like this:
And not like this:
Of course all of the above hinges on the presumption Megan Fox isn't a stage name and her real name is Bernice van Arshlicht or something.
So she's a Megan, and she's a fox, and all is good. She can't act her way out of wet newspaper, but we'd like to see her try anyway. And she's good for a headline, it would seem (and not in any way because it enables lazy subbies to run photos of highly concentrated pouting sultriness next to the story.) A couple of recent Googlegrabs (recent, as in today):
Megan Fox’s sex honesty
Megan Fox open to dating women
Megan Fox films sex scene for zombie flick
Megan Fox reveals affair with female stripper
Megan Fox to keep revealing her sex life
Megan Fox in sex romp with Scarlett Johansson and large tub of Neapolitan icecream
(Note: one of these may have been made up)
So the lesbian stripper story, such as it is, is this. Eighteen year old wannabe-actress moves to Hollywood, breaks up with boyfriend, all alone in big city, decides to start stalking hot Russian stripper from dubiously named gentlemen's establishment (The Body Shop, FFS? Anita Roddick would be spinning in her grave) and has relationship with same. Sorry, that should be has hot, teenage, lesbian relationship with same. I think I got the order right there. And that's all good.
The zombie sex story is regarding her next great role: that of a possessed lesbian zombie cheerleader in something called Jennifer's Body. What else? "I eat and seduce everyone," the actress explained, when quizzed on the intricacies of the plot and of her character's motivations. And of course all great roles need their pivotal scenes - think Citizen Kane on the steps, Dirty Harry on the riverbank, Kenny emptying his septic truck over that guy's convertible - and Jennifer's is... a topless lesbian bump-and-grind bedroom romp with the chick from Mamma Mia. Again I ask, what else?
The unifying theme here seems to be 'Megan Fox likes sex, almost as much as she likes talking loudly about it to entertainment reporters', as illustrated by a third separate story - yes, in a single day - subheadlined '‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’ star Megan Fox has vowed never to stop talking about her sex life, insisting she is not embarrassed to reveal her bedroom antics.'
Megan Fox has vowed never to stop talking about her sex life.Oh for fuck's sake. Did they not, love?
The ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’ star – who recently admitted she has the libido of a teenage boy - insists she is not embarrassed to reveal her bedroom antics to the world.
She said: “Sex is something that everyone does, so why can’t I talk about it?”
Megan also revealed she is keen to star in a variety of different movie genres which showcase her versatility, because she doesn’t feel the two ‘Transformers’ movies challenged her as an artist....
But this is not the problem with the story, or any of the other stories published on this very Fox-centric day in cyberspace, most of which were bits and pieces taken from a recent GQ interview. No, the problem with the story, and with Megan Fox, is a simple one, but one which forces any normal, well-adjusted individual to draw a line under her and declare, "From you, we will hear no more. Shush, get off the internet, and be gone with thee."
That simple problem is this: she's engaged - yes, engaged, deliberately, on purpose - to this guy.
Yes, it's the dweeby little twink from 90210 with three names and no discernable talent, Brian Austin Green.
This might not prove there is no God, but it certainly proves something else - there's no accounting for fuckin' taste.
The Doctor is OUT.
EXCLUSIVE: GERMAN F1 DRIVER 'LIKEABLE' SHOCK!
Yeah, how 'bout them Worry Arse last Sunday.
Meanwhile in a park five miles south-east of Milan, a dude in a Minardi was busy winning a Formula One race. That's a simplification, obviously. It was a Minardi painted to look like a can of Red Bull in accordance with the team's current owners, and the dude wasn't so much winning as collectively pantsing the entire field and applying his size eleven repeatedly to the bullseye so formed. Rookie German pilot Sebastian Vettel, best known to date as that hapless monkey who piled into the back of Red Bull 'senior team' leader Mark Webber in last year's Japanese GP... under the safety car... (cue Webber's post-race interview on worldwide TV: "It’s kids isn’t it... kids with not enough experience... they do a good job and then they fuck it all up"), actually turns out to be fairly handy in the wet - being named after a brand of mineral water can't hurt - as long as he's out in front and doesn't have anyone to run into. He's also, it would seem, vaguely likeable. He swears in press conferences, quotes Little Britain and Monty Python, and generally looks like he actually enjoys being paid to race F1 cars at Ludicrous Speed around race tracks every other weekend. The bumfluff beard is a bit Greg Bird, who is a worthless fucktard with no redeeming qualities whatsoever (but not as utterly fucking stupid as his missus), but we can safely assume Seb has never heard of the Dirty Bird and is probably better off for his ignorance. He's also flipped the bird (see what I did there?) at suggestions he's the next Schumacher - having carried the big-chinned arse to Germany's win in the Nations Cup segment of the Race of Champions at the end of last year.
Of course the British press barely noticed a bloody thing having still been trying to untangle the knot they'd managed to wad in their knickers over Lewis Hamiltron getting stung with a retrospective penalty for passing Look-At-Me-Kimi Raikkonen by jumping a chicane in the previous week's damp closing stages of the Belgian GP, then not quite giving the spot back to reverse the dodginess before sodding off for the win. Amidst the bleating - and some of it was astonishing - noone actually thought to ask whether anyone else thought it was unfair. And when the other drivers were actually asked, next week in Monza, the answer was a very Andy Symonds style 'Nah mate nah.' However none of the drivers asked any of the press to go fishing with them and knock back a few Solos rather than pulling laps of a very wet Monza for the weekend. Basically noone thought the Second Coming of Jesus Christ (to give Hamiltron his official title) was hard done by. You pass someone illegally, you give the place back. Properly. Entirely. And you don't try and blouse past into the next turn. Ferchrists, even Russell Ingall can work that out, and he's a congenital retard from Adelaide. Why couldn't Hamiltron? Did Ron's software wonks forget to compile that line of code into his CPU?
Christ, the sooner Britain's footballers start playing proper football and the tabloids can fuck off out of F1, the better... what? Four-one against Rampaging Roy Slaven Bilic and the Stoned Cros? Work experience kid Theo Walcott getting a hat-trick? Jesus, they'll be insufferable. They even think they're a shot at the Ashes now they're unbeaten since the skunk-headed Saffer is driving the bus (did I tell you I saw him in person a block from Lords the day he got the job, getting shepherded about the place by a bunch of blazer-wearing twats? Did I gratuitously namedrop the fact I was in London and you weren't? How much of a complete fucking punisher do you think I can be about it? That much? Fair enough).
It's less than a year to the Ashes, and yet again, it's time to put the English in their place. Do they ever learn?
The Doctor is OUT.
Meanwhile in a park five miles south-east of Milan, a dude in a Minardi was busy winning a Formula One race. That's a simplification, obviously. It was a Minardi painted to look like a can of Red Bull in accordance with the team's current owners, and the dude wasn't so much winning as collectively pantsing the entire field and applying his size eleven repeatedly to the bullseye so formed. Rookie German pilot Sebastian Vettel, best known to date as that hapless monkey who piled into the back of Red Bull 'senior team' leader Mark Webber in last year's Japanese GP... under the safety car... (cue Webber's post-race interview on worldwide TV: "It’s kids isn’t it... kids with not enough experience... they do a good job and then they fuck it all up"), actually turns out to be fairly handy in the wet - being named after a brand of mineral water can't hurt - as long as he's out in front and doesn't have anyone to run into. He's also, it would seem, vaguely likeable. He swears in press conferences, quotes Little Britain and Monty Python, and generally looks like he actually enjoys being paid to race F1 cars at Ludicrous Speed around race tracks every other weekend. The bumfluff beard is a bit Greg Bird, who is a worthless fucktard with no redeeming qualities whatsoever (but not as utterly fucking stupid as his missus), but we can safely assume Seb has never heard of the Dirty Bird and is probably better off for his ignorance. He's also flipped the bird (see what I did there?) at suggestions he's the next Schumacher - having carried the big-chinned arse to Germany's win in the Nations Cup segment of the Race of Champions at the end of last year.
Of course the British press barely noticed a bloody thing having still been trying to untangle the knot they'd managed to wad in their knickers over Lewis Hamiltron getting stung with a retrospective penalty for passing Look-At-Me-Kimi Raikkonen by jumping a chicane in the previous week's damp closing stages of the Belgian GP, then not quite giving the spot back to reverse the dodginess before sodding off for the win. Amidst the bleating - and some of it was astonishing - noone actually thought to ask whether anyone else thought it was unfair. And when the other drivers were actually asked, next week in Monza, the answer was a very Andy Symonds style 'Nah mate nah.' However none of the drivers asked any of the press to go fishing with them and knock back a few Solos rather than pulling laps of a very wet Monza for the weekend. Basically noone thought the Second Coming of Jesus Christ (to give Hamiltron his official title) was hard done by. You pass someone illegally, you give the place back. Properly. Entirely. And you don't try and blouse past into the next turn. Ferchrists, even Russell Ingall can work that out, and he's a congenital retard from Adelaide. Why couldn't Hamiltron? Did Ron's software wonks forget to compile that line of code into his CPU?
Christ, the sooner Britain's footballers start playing proper football and the tabloids can fuck off out of F1, the better... what? Four-one against Rampaging Roy Slaven Bilic and the Stoned Cros? Work experience kid Theo Walcott getting a hat-trick? Jesus, they'll be insufferable. They even think they're a shot at the Ashes now they're unbeaten since the skunk-headed Saffer is driving the bus (did I tell you I saw him in person a block from Lords the day he got the job, getting shepherded about the place by a bunch of blazer-wearing twats? Did I gratuitously namedrop the fact I was in London and you weren't? How much of a complete fucking punisher do you think I can be about it? That much? Fair enough).
It's less than a year to the Ashes, and yet again, it's time to put the English in their place. Do they ever learn?
The Doctor is OUT.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Makin' bacon
I'd like to talk to you today about something very close to my heart. In that it's something that is probably making the artery walls of my heart closer together than they used to be. It's called bacon, and along with beer, big fuck-off motorbikes and bi-curious amateur girls with big boobies, is among my very favourite things in the entire universe. Pity you can't combine any more than three of them at once without the potential for disaster, or at least a mess that's not coming out of the living room carpet without a heavy duty can of Shake-N-Vac.
I have a theory, ladies and gentlemen, about bacon which I'd like to share with you. My hypothesis is this; that bacon is, in fact, man chocolate. I'll rephrase that before you puerile idiots start sniggering. Bacon is to man as chocolate is to The Ladies. That whole deal of obsessing over chocolate, gormlessly and fatuously declaring oneself to be a 'chocoholic', compulsively gorging on the stuff at Certain Times Of The Month (i.e any day with 'day' in the day) - yeah, well I have that for bacon, the prince of foods, the snack food of champions. Bacon can complement breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert and can even provide sterling service as a condiment. There is indeed no meal to which bacon cannot 'add value', and anyone who disagrees is either vegirrelevant, or possesses ovaries. Either way: your input is Not Mission Critical.
Actually, that position, while defendable, is not entirely enlightened, and I have become aware of bacon-curious ladies who are beginning to see my way of thinking. A fellow researcher was stopped at the lights (yes we have them one the Riviera of the Antarctic) on her way to work one recent morning. And through her window, suddenly and randomly, was lobbed... a bacon buttie! Hallelujah! Manna from heaven! Or more accurately, manna from a promo girl from the Rock FM station, whose marketing department is either very, very clever or very, very stoned. I presume she was aiming for the preset on our correspondent's car stereo. In any case, this is the Greatest Radio Station Promotion EVAAAARRRRR, and has resulted in me driving aimlessly around and between any and all traffic-lighted intersections in the local area at morning peak fifteen-minutes, hoping against hope that I'll come across a girl in a tight-fitting The Rock T-shirt and jeans who'll sidle over to my car in the fleeting opportune moments afforded by the red, with a promising smile, and offer me a taste of her bacon sandwich.
I'm not sure that came out right.
Anyhoo, as a cultural attache of note and an internationalist of repute, I can tell you that from my extensive research on the topic, bacon is different over here. It's wetter. Strayan bacon is more stringently cured than Kiwi bacon, ending up saltier, drier and crisper. And, obviously, better. But one must make do as best one can when one is overusing one as a term of reference for oneself. And bacon is bacon, and bacon is good. Whether in an authentic Italian carbonara (no cream, you backward-arsed heathens), paired in the holy burger trinity of chicken and avocado, bewilderingly smothered in maple syrup and condimented onto pancakes by Canadians, casually slapped into a Bacon & Egg McArse by a spotty prepubescent (and why the fuck do they need 15 minutes to do so these days? Bring back the fucking warning trays Ronald, you smug-faced twunt) or just chopped up real fine, doused in soy and grilled with oysters kilpatrick, either as an aphrodisiac or a purgative depending on the allergy status of your intended, bacon is all the pork you'll ever need on your fork.
'Vegetarian bacon', though, that's fuckin' crook. That shit needs outlawing.
The Doctor is OUT.
I have a theory, ladies and gentlemen, about bacon which I'd like to share with you. My hypothesis is this; that bacon is, in fact, man chocolate. I'll rephrase that before you puerile idiots start sniggering. Bacon is to man as chocolate is to The Ladies. That whole deal of obsessing over chocolate, gormlessly and fatuously declaring oneself to be a 'chocoholic', compulsively gorging on the stuff at Certain Times Of The Month (i.e any day with 'day' in the day) - yeah, well I have that for bacon, the prince of foods, the snack food of champions. Bacon can complement breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert and can even provide sterling service as a condiment. There is indeed no meal to which bacon cannot 'add value', and anyone who disagrees is either vegirrelevant, or possesses ovaries. Either way: your input is Not Mission Critical.
Actually, that position, while defendable, is not entirely enlightened, and I have become aware of bacon-curious ladies who are beginning to see my way of thinking. A fellow researcher was stopped at the lights (yes we have them one the Riviera of the Antarctic) on her way to work one recent morning. And through her window, suddenly and randomly, was lobbed... a bacon buttie! Hallelujah! Manna from heaven! Or more accurately, manna from a promo girl from the Rock FM station, whose marketing department is either very, very clever or very, very stoned. I presume she was aiming for the preset on our correspondent's car stereo. In any case, this is the Greatest Radio Station Promotion EVAAAARRRRR, and has resulted in me driving aimlessly around and between any and all traffic-lighted intersections in the local area at morning peak fifteen-minutes, hoping against hope that I'll come across a girl in a tight-fitting The Rock T-shirt and jeans who'll sidle over to my car in the fleeting opportune moments afforded by the red, with a promising smile, and offer me a taste of her bacon sandwich.
I'm not sure that came out right.
Anyhoo, as a cultural attache of note and an internationalist of repute, I can tell you that from my extensive research on the topic, bacon is different over here. It's wetter. Strayan bacon is more stringently cured than Kiwi bacon, ending up saltier, drier and crisper. And, obviously, better. But one must make do as best one can when one is overusing one as a term of reference for oneself. And bacon is bacon, and bacon is good. Whether in an authentic Italian carbonara (no cream, you backward-arsed heathens), paired in the holy burger trinity of chicken and avocado, bewilderingly smothered in maple syrup and condimented onto pancakes by Canadians, casually slapped into a Bacon & Egg McArse by a spotty prepubescent (and why the fuck do they need 15 minutes to do so these days? Bring back the fucking warning trays Ronald, you smug-faced twunt) or just chopped up real fine, doused in soy and grilled with oysters kilpatrick, either as an aphrodisiac or a purgative depending on the allergy status of your intended, bacon is all the pork you'll ever need on your fork.
'Vegetarian bacon', though, that's fuckin' crook. That shit needs outlawing.
The Doctor is OUT.
No time to dally, Em
Billy Slater was robbed. Robbed, I tell yuz! How dare he be rubbed out of a best-and-fairest competition on the basis of a couple of lazy uppercuts and a few weeks' holiday? Meanwhile, Rugby League is safe from cheese-eating surrender monkey rugby types with big chequebooks, because Greg Inglis, Queensland's favourite New South Welshmen since AB, has re-signed with Melbourne for the next 15 minutes (never mind about Benji, Sonny Bill and the Fire-Up Bitch merchant.) And Melbourne's attractive and engaging style of play - flop the entire scrum onto blokes in the tackle and try to remove their head like a twist-top stubby - is the greatest thing to revolutionise the game since Jack Gibson came back from his NFL study trip with a clipboard of wacky ideas in the '70s. Craig Bellamy is a genius, and everyone is just jealous.
Or so I understand from reading the News Limited papers. Amazing how much good press your team gets when you're owned by the publishers, yeah?
I hate the Melbourne Storm. I always have, and so should you. They are a venal, disreputable, unethical post-modern invention of money and greed which speaks directly to the soullessness, the corporatization and the disgusting cancerous avarice of modern sport. The Melbourne Storm are everything that is wrong with the world. Let's be unequivocal, and get to the crux of the matter: I would rather Manly won the comp. And that's not just because the jelly-wrestlers put 42 points on my Bunnies last week, whereas we gave the Seagles a touch-up last time we saw 'em, meaning we can claim prior precedence if they win (i.e. they won, we beat them, therefore we're champions. Worked in the schoolyard, can work again.)
The Storm owe their existence to Super League, Lachlan Murdoch, John Ribot and a host of other pestilences foist upon the world by Uncle Rupert and News Limited. They are the reason that the North Sydney Bears were chained to a rock and beaten to death, that the Magpies were eaten by the Tigers, that the Steelers were left to rust before St George sold the carcass for scrap, that the Rabbitohs went south - if only for a few years, and only ILLEGALLY. If it wasn't for the Storm, there wouldn't have needed to be ten years without a Gold Coast team in the NRL. The Gold Coast Giants, Seagulls and/or Chargers gave us Preston Campbell, Wally beating the Broncos after Benny had given him the arse, and most significantly of all, the great Peter Gill. The Melbourne Storm gave us Brett Kimmorley and the grapple tackle. They have no soul, no heart, no fanbase (certainly not one that would stick around if a Super 14 team rocked into town - count the number of Kiwi faces in the crowd at the Dome this weekend, they're the munty ones) and no reason for existing, other than to make money for their media magnate overlords. Melbourne needs rugby league like a fish needs a bicycle, which you don't need Bono to tell you is NOT VERY FUCKING MUCH SONNY.
In conclusion, the Storm are arse, and I hope they die in a ditch like the scrotal fungus that they are. Go the Warriors on the weekend.
The Doctor is OUT.
Or so I understand from reading the News Limited papers. Amazing how much good press your team gets when you're owned by the publishers, yeah?
I hate the Melbourne Storm. I always have, and so should you. They are a venal, disreputable, unethical post-modern invention of money and greed which speaks directly to the soullessness, the corporatization and the disgusting cancerous avarice of modern sport. The Melbourne Storm are everything that is wrong with the world. Let's be unequivocal, and get to the crux of the matter: I would rather Manly won the comp. And that's not just because the jelly-wrestlers put 42 points on my Bunnies last week, whereas we gave the Seagles a touch-up last time we saw 'em, meaning we can claim prior precedence if they win (i.e. they won, we beat them, therefore we're champions. Worked in the schoolyard, can work again.)
The Storm owe their existence to Super League, Lachlan Murdoch, John Ribot and a host of other pestilences foist upon the world by Uncle Rupert and News Limited. They are the reason that the North Sydney Bears were chained to a rock and beaten to death, that the Magpies were eaten by the Tigers, that the Steelers were left to rust before St George sold the carcass for scrap, that the Rabbitohs went south - if only for a few years, and only ILLEGALLY. If it wasn't for the Storm, there wouldn't have needed to be ten years without a Gold Coast team in the NRL. The Gold Coast Giants, Seagulls and/or Chargers gave us Preston Campbell, Wally beating the Broncos after Benny had given him the arse, and most significantly of all, the great Peter Gill. The Melbourne Storm gave us Brett Kimmorley and the grapple tackle. They have no soul, no heart, no fanbase (certainly not one that would stick around if a Super 14 team rocked into town - count the number of Kiwi faces in the crowd at the Dome this weekend, they're the munty ones) and no reason for existing, other than to make money for their media magnate overlords. Melbourne needs rugby league like a fish needs a bicycle, which you don't need Bono to tell you is NOT VERY FUCKING MUCH SONNY.
In conclusion, the Storm are arse, and I hope they die in a ditch like the scrotal fungus that they are. Go the Warriors on the weekend.
The Doctor is OUT.
The glorious unCERNtainty of existence
At 9.30pm CET yesterday, a bunch of white lab-coated wonks buried in a super-secret compound deep under the Swiss Alps, switched on a machine designed to generate a black hole and destroy the world. It didn't work, so they're trying again next week.
Well, the doomsday device - the CERN Large Hadron Collider (as distinct from the Large Hadrian Collider, which was a truck which ran off the road in northern England and crashed into an old Roman wall - what, too obscure?) - worked pretty well, actually. About all the particle physics punishers in question actually did was to switch the thing on, align the beams, fire a few "lasers" around the track, then knocked off for beers. Despite the clamouring, embarrassing straw-man-a-thon of the media (i.e. breathlessly claiming 'World About To End In Nuclear Physics Experiment' then immediately afterwards declaring 'World Disappointingly Fails To End In Nuclear Physics Experiment'), CERN's best, brightest and deservedly single-est haven't actually smashed anything into anything yet. So there's hope yet for doomsday cults worldwide who are still trying to get over the public humiliation of that whole Y2K lead balloon, the biggest anticlimax since Jason Biggs tried to bang that exchange chick in American Pie 1.
Personally, I welcome Switzerland being turned into a black hole, a bottomless non-existant non-entity from which no light can excape and in which no life can be possible. And by 'welcome' I obviously mean 'would not actually be able to tell the difference'. And there'd bound to be pluses - Roger Federer would need a new place to hang his shingle, and since Llittle Lleyton's ggone to sshit we've been short of a decent tennis number one. Of course we'd have to stipulate on grounds of national pride that he'd be contractually prohibited from appearing in any more of those fucking punishing Gillette Mach Turbo Fusion Vibraslap Extreme Bollocks commercials with one-legged Tiger and that haughty Terry Henry git who used to play for Arsenal.
The actual point of the exercise, allegedly, is to smash tiny shit into each other at ferociously high speeds, much as most of us used to do with our Matchbox cars in kindy, in order to try and get at the most fundamental unsolved questions of the universe, like the mechanism of how gravity acts on mass, what dark matter is (other than the stuff which is used to make the griddle marks on chicken burgers), whether the Higgs Boson is truly a 'God particle' or just a highly obscure snowboarding manouevre, and why noone at CERN can manage to pull a root.
The Doctor is OUT.
Well, the doomsday device - the CERN Large Hadron Collider (as distinct from the Large Hadrian Collider, which was a truck which ran off the road in northern England and crashed into an old Roman wall - what, too obscure?) - worked pretty well, actually. About all the particle physics punishers in question actually did was to switch the thing on, align the beams, fire a few "lasers" around the track, then knocked off for beers. Despite the clamouring, embarrassing straw-man-a-thon of the media (i.e. breathlessly claiming 'World About To End In Nuclear Physics Experiment' then immediately afterwards declaring 'World Disappointingly Fails To End In Nuclear Physics Experiment'), CERN's best, brightest and deservedly single-est haven't actually smashed anything into anything yet. So there's hope yet for doomsday cults worldwide who are still trying to get over the public humiliation of that whole Y2K lead balloon, the biggest anticlimax since Jason Biggs tried to bang that exchange chick in American Pie 1.
Personally, I welcome Switzerland being turned into a black hole, a bottomless non-existant non-entity from which no light can excape and in which no life can be possible. And by 'welcome' I obviously mean 'would not actually be able to tell the difference'. And there'd bound to be pluses - Roger Federer would need a new place to hang his shingle, and since Llittle Lleyton's ggone to sshit we've been short of a decent tennis number one. Of course we'd have to stipulate on grounds of national pride that he'd be contractually prohibited from appearing in any more of those fucking punishing Gillette Mach Turbo Fusion Vibraslap Extreme Bollocks commercials with one-legged Tiger and that haughty Terry Henry git who used to play for Arsenal.
The actual point of the exercise, allegedly, is to smash tiny shit into each other at ferociously high speeds, much as most of us used to do with our Matchbox cars in kindy, in order to try and get at the most fundamental unsolved questions of the universe, like the mechanism of how gravity acts on mass, what dark matter is (other than the stuff which is used to make the griddle marks on chicken burgers), whether the Higgs Boson is truly a 'God particle' or just a highly obscure snowboarding manouevre, and why noone at CERN can manage to pull a root.
The Doctor is OUT.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Bye-O-Wolf
Blasphemic though it may seem for an alleged sports columnist, I'm not watching the Olympics. I refuse to. Officially it's as a protest against China's human rights record, actions in Tibet, aggression towards Taiwan, global warming culpability, nuclear testing profligacy and anything else we can pin on the little bastards before lunchtime, but in reality, it's because no-one born on the sunny side of the ditch can possibly stomach two weeks of Kiwi-centric Olympic coverage on TVNZ, watching breathlessly as the brave Kiwi hope finishes a plucky ninth in the dressage or the kayaking or the flower arranging or the rugby union or whatever other bumfuck-irrelevant sports Nuw Zillund seems to specialise in. Not to mention a complete and total lack of a NZ equivalent of Roy and HG to make any form of sense out of the cascading font of verbal diarrhoea which constitutes Olympic commentary on the best of days at TVNZ. 'Right, Fred, you're a commentator, yeah? What do you usually commentate on? Rugby? Good, you're calling the cycling road race. Good luck, and don't let the fact you don't know a fucking thing about what's going on prevent you spouting utter bollocks for the entire duration of the event. Toodle pip.'
So instead I'm going to talk about Wolfmother breaking up. Not that this is news; anyone who saw, heard or even heard of their shambolic, discordant performance at Splendour could have guessed things were on the cusp of going pear-shaped in excelsius deo. One review suggested 'drummer Chris Ross and bassist/keyboardist Myles Heskett were playing one show, while Andrew Stockdale fronted Andy Andy and the Andy Andy’s, an imaginary band more interested in the adulation of an intoxicated festival crowd than playing remotely in time with his actual rhythm section'. Oooh, feel the burn. Next day the press release (in itself an oxymoron) hit the streets annoucing the band's disintegration.
These announcements are always great fun as a drinking game; skol for every mention of 'artistic differences' or 'by mutual consent' or other bits of wank. The Wolfie presser is a particularly fine example of the breed. "Longstanding frictions"... "extended break"... "irreconcilable personal and musical differences"... "focusing energies on new projects"... In fact, everything short of the closer-to-actual-factual "Andy Stockdale got LSD (Lead Singer Disorder, a condition first diagnosed by Dr Edward Van Halen in chronic sufferer David Lee Roth in 1985) and the other two decided they'd rather play Kraftwerk-style electronica than churn through another year of touring with the insufferable big-'froed prat." Wolfmother will continue in name with Stockdale and an entirely new supporting cast - hey, it worked for Lemmy over the years - but it's hard not to see this as another case of band emerges, band records enormous fuck-off album, band gets huge, band disappears up lead singer's arse never to be heard from again. Or alternatively, in the case of the Darkness, band disappears up lead singer's nose.
What they really need - what might have saved one-and-a-half album bands like the Darkness from extinction - is some kind of publicity stunt designed solely to boost flagging sales of their dismal current album. Preferably as cheap, as tawdry and as mercenarily transparent as possible. Something like the Veronicas have pulled off by not only having half their head count turning up on the internerd with baps akimbo, but then organising a press call for aforementioned tween-impersonating twiglet to bound out of a very flimsy-looking hastily assembled Super A-Mart flat-pack closet and declare her undying love for flange, in particular that belonging to some vacuous pop tart from MTV Australia. Although reading the fine print, our Jess appears to have sworn off other forms of red meat as part of the deal. And it's not as if this approach is entirely gender-reversible - your man Andrew the Afro is unlikely to get much mileage shacking up with Andrew G - though imagine the potential for hair product sponsorship tie-ins.
The other problem with the tits-out lesbos-in approach - other than its inherent gender inequality - is that it doesn't really give you anywhere to go after that should your career really start to come to a spluttering halt. After that, there's only rehab or a celebrity sex video in order to get attention. Or, if you're Britney, all of the above. And while a celeb sex video between Thingy Veronica and The Other One might be moderately popular in some circles, we of course here at this august family publication couldn't possibly endorse the promotion of such a thing. The irrelevance-prolonging celeb sex tape is a tricky art form and one best left to the likes of Britney, Paris, Pam Anderson and... Kate Ritchie?!?!?
Oh THAT's wrong. That's deeply, deeply wrong. I know her career's gone a bit arsebag since she quit Home and Away after starting there as a drama-trained foetus 20 years ago, and things have to be grim for anyone to end up working with Merrick and fuckin' Rosso, but seriously... for Christ's sake, how far is this going to go? Who's going to be next? Alf Stewart? I don't want to see his flamin' mongrel, that's for sure.
Actually, if you want our prediction: it's always the former child stars. You heard it here first: Nikki Webster. As Beijing has shown, after the spotlight fades, life's not so great for annoying tykes famous only for lip-synching through Olympic opening ceremonies...
The Doctor is OUT.
So instead I'm going to talk about Wolfmother breaking up. Not that this is news; anyone who saw, heard or even heard of their shambolic, discordant performance at Splendour could have guessed things were on the cusp of going pear-shaped in excelsius deo. One review suggested 'drummer Chris Ross and bassist/keyboardist Myles Heskett were playing one show, while Andrew Stockdale fronted Andy Andy and the Andy Andy’s, an imaginary band more interested in the adulation of an intoxicated festival crowd than playing remotely in time with his actual rhythm section'. Oooh, feel the burn. Next day the press release (in itself an oxymoron) hit the streets annoucing the band's disintegration.
These announcements are always great fun as a drinking game; skol for every mention of 'artistic differences' or 'by mutual consent' or other bits of wank. The Wolfie presser is a particularly fine example of the breed. "Longstanding frictions"... "extended break"... "irreconcilable personal and musical differences"... "focusing energies on new projects"... In fact, everything short of the closer-to-actual-factual "Andy Stockdale got LSD (Lead Singer Disorder, a condition first diagnosed by Dr Edward Van Halen in chronic sufferer David Lee Roth in 1985) and the other two decided they'd rather play Kraftwerk-style electronica than churn through another year of touring with the insufferable big-'froed prat." Wolfmother will continue in name with Stockdale and an entirely new supporting cast - hey, it worked for Lemmy over the years - but it's hard not to see this as another case of band emerges, band records enormous fuck-off album, band gets huge, band disappears up lead singer's arse never to be heard from again. Or alternatively, in the case of the Darkness, band disappears up lead singer's nose.
What they really need - what might have saved one-and-a-half album bands like the Darkness from extinction - is some kind of publicity stunt designed solely to boost flagging sales of their dismal current album. Preferably as cheap, as tawdry and as mercenarily transparent as possible. Something like the Veronicas have pulled off by not only having half their head count turning up on the internerd with baps akimbo, but then organising a press call for aforementioned tween-impersonating twiglet to bound out of a very flimsy-looking hastily assembled Super A-Mart flat-pack closet and declare her undying love for flange, in particular that belonging to some vacuous pop tart from MTV Australia. Although reading the fine print, our Jess appears to have sworn off other forms of red meat as part of the deal. And it's not as if this approach is entirely gender-reversible - your man Andrew the Afro is unlikely to get much mileage shacking up with Andrew G - though imagine the potential for hair product sponsorship tie-ins.
The other problem with the tits-out lesbos-in approach - other than its inherent gender inequality - is that it doesn't really give you anywhere to go after that should your career really start to come to a spluttering halt. After that, there's only rehab or a celebrity sex video in order to get attention. Or, if you're Britney, all of the above. And while a celeb sex video between Thingy Veronica and The Other One might be moderately popular in some circles, we of course here at this august family publication couldn't possibly endorse the promotion of such a thing. The irrelevance-prolonging celeb sex tape is a tricky art form and one best left to the likes of Britney, Paris, Pam Anderson and... Kate Ritchie?!?!?
Oh THAT's wrong. That's deeply, deeply wrong. I know her career's gone a bit arsebag since she quit Home and Away after starting there as a drama-trained foetus 20 years ago, and things have to be grim for anyone to end up working with Merrick and fuckin' Rosso, but seriously... for Christ's sake, how far is this going to go? Who's going to be next? Alf Stewart? I don't want to see his flamin' mongrel, that's for sure.
Actually, if you want our prediction: it's always the former child stars. You heard it here first: Nikki Webster. As Beijing has shown, after the spotlight fades, life's not so great for annoying tykes famous only for lip-synching through Olympic opening ceremonies...
The Doctor is OUT.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
What I learned on my holidays
Not that it was a holiday of course, it was bloody hard work etc etc bollocks. Here's what two weeks in England and Europe taught me about England and Europe.
England is not part of Europe.
London might be an hour and a half from northern France by Eurostar, but England's as much part of Europe as is Pakistan.
European cities smell of wee.
Be thankful this isn't Smell-o-Vision.
What this photo doesn't show (thankfully) is the Belgian approach to public toilets: literally, public toilets. Meaning open-air slashers on street corners. And yes, the Belgian male populace were happy to drop trou and water the plastic even in brilliant mid-afternoon sunshine. And noone thought this was in any way odd.
Belgians are odd.
QED. But what could realistically be expected of a country famous solely for soapy beer, chocolate and pedophiles?
From our Latest Advances in Soapy Beer files: Hoegaarden Citron. Soap with lemon flavouring. Think Sunlight dishwashing liquid with carbonation.
European universities are run-down shitholes.
The main lecture block at the University of Gent resembled a cross between the access tunnels at St James Station on Sydney's decrepit City Circle underground, and a tiled urinal from a '60s pub.
We are shit hot.
We might be from the other side of the world, but scientifically, we've got the Eurotrash covered. Our patented brand of 'Break stuff to figure out how it works' science had Engerland and the Continent's finest running scared. Or, in the case of the boss' old boss, making very dubious excuses. 'Sure we can't do any functional studies in our model system, but the advantage of that is it's easier to come up with hypotheses...' Which you, erm, can't test.
Afrikaans may be the language of love, but Flemish Dutch gets the chicks hotter, wetter and nastier than a dockworker's armpit.
On a related topic, the Flemish Dutch for 'Art' is 'Kunst'. Appropriately. Particularly appropriately given that the Museum of Contemporary Art translates as 'Museum Actuele Kunst'...
...which is quite fitting since I've always maintained contemporary art is actually a load of old vag.
Of all the European races to get on the piss with at a European conference, the best by far are Australians and New Zealanders.
Which was why our tribe of drunks comprised me, two Kiwis, three girls from Queensland and a couple of lost Poms and Seppos.
Russians can't hold their piss.
Judging by the pair of sorry fuckers who attached themselves to our party after the conference dinner, nicknamed 'Gropie' and 'Fightie' based on their preferred means of interaction with our peeps. Interesting fact: the current poo-fight in South Ossetia was instigated by Russia getting fucked off by Georgia talking to a girl Russia was interested in, and Georgia's mates telling Russia to fuck off when Russia tried to get friendly.
Londoners could use cheering the fuck up. Seriously.
Ever wondered why no Londoners actually work in hospitality in London anymore? It's because they're shit at being hospitable. And because the one million Poles have to do something (other than holding up the power lines of course.) The Cockney shuttle bus driver who took us to our hotel on our first hours in London genuinely looked in hideous discomfort as a result of us paying him to do the job he was employed to do.
This is largely because:
The English are genetically inferior to Australians and New Zealanders.
Think of the settlement of the Antipodes as an experiment in targeted evolution. Take all your resourceful, entrepreneurial, risk-taking adventurers - either by rounding up volunteer migrants or by locking up a bunch of petty criminals and Irish nationalists - and remove them from your gene pool, to send them tens of thousands of miles to the other side of the world. Is it any wonder their offspring go on to be a bunch of self-motivated, intelligent, competitive, authority-ignoring hard cases who routinely kick your arse at any sort of competitive meeting, sporting or intellectual? Or why the genetic flotsam that stayed home are such a sorry bunch of gits? Whose only recognisable features seem to be (a) whinging and (b) the ability to spontaneously self-aggregate into a queue when in gatherings of three or more? Britain's Sports minister declared in the papers that they were on track for a record haul of medals at Beijing; unfortunately noone pointed out that competitive queueing is only a non-medal demonstration sport at this games, though obviously it's in for London 2012. Give an Englishman the opportunity to be in a queue, and then to be able to whinge about being in a queue, and you've got an Englishman who's mere seconds away from combusting with delight. Which, of course, he will whinge about.
The only reason anyone bothers painting pedestrian crossings on European roads is to give approaching drivers sighting marks to line up their targets.
Though you may be in the right, the ensuing argument may be difficult to win, given the language barrier and the fact they're in a car. I find loud swearing works quite well.
The Tube rocks.
Literally. Though usually it just wallows like a harpooned whale. Time for a bit of trackwork methinks lads? Or, in the great British tradition of patronising euphemism, 'planned engineering'?
All the well-worn, long-standing cliches about English food and drink are well-worn, long-standing cliches because of one simple fact. They're true.
The food's awful, the coffee's hideous (burnt and bitter, as results from turning your espresso machine up to Vulcanize like a prize fuckwit) and the beer's warm. Even when it's thirty degrees outside.
You know things are grim when this bucket of arse starts looking a winner.
I am an accent slut.
Seriously, get me away from home for just a week or so and I'll pick up anything you've got. Five days in Flanders field and I'm sounding like John Travolta in Goldmember.
Is good, yessh?
In the words of TISM: London. The five hundred most snooty people think something's important. Big fuckin' whoopie.
Yeah, London's OK. It's a big city. People everywhere, stuff happening. But it's not worth the price of admission. Quite why generations of kids from both sides of the ditch are compelled to fling themselves at it like moths to a blue electric zappy thing is a bit beyond me.
And Jesus suffering fuck is it a dash on the exxy side.
Streetside parking lot in average London side-street. Or maybe the Historic Supercars display at the British Motor Show. I don't remember which.
Singapore Airlines have some fuck-off weird ideas of what constitutes breakfast.
Pork vermicelli? At 6am? Not even superhot Asian poontang in a silk full body condom is convincing me that's a good idea. I'll have the rubberized omelette thanks Chung Li.
And finally - read your ticket stub. It speaks the truth.
Mine is from the HANNspree World Superbike Round at Brands Hatch, and says the following: 'WARNING: Motorsport can be DANGEROUS. Despite the organisers taking all reasonable precautions, unavoidable accidents can happen. In respect of these you are present at your own risk.'
We had a fantastic day at the Superbikes. We watched bikes, drank beer, ate rubbish food and got rained on. Craig Jones didn't have a fantastic day. Craig Jones died last Monday night from injuries he sustained in a hideous crash in the Supersport race. By all accounts he was a lovely lad, great white British hope, career on the up-and-up, leading the race in front of his home crowd, when it all went horribly, horribly wrong for him. And for a mate of his, Kempsey's 2001 World Supersport champion Andrew Pitt, third in line behind Jones when he highsided off his Honda at 200 kays directly into the path of the following freight train, whose own CBR600RR inflicted the injuries which finally did for him. I could talk about how empty platitudes like 'He went doing what he loved' must be for his family, his mates or even Andrew Pitt, or the hideous sinking feeling in my own gut watching them trying to peel him off the tarmac fifty yards from where I was standing, unfurling a bright red curtain to hide the reality from the punters, while the fuckers on the PA chortled on idiotically and oh-so-Englishly as though nothing at all was going on.
Leaving us with two final thoughts: (a) the English are gormless, spineless cunts; and (b) Craig Jones, despite being English, was - is - more a man than anyone who left Brands Hatch on their own two legs that day.
Vale that man.
The Doctor is OUT.
England is not part of Europe.
London might be an hour and a half from northern France by Eurostar, but England's as much part of Europe as is Pakistan.
European cities smell of wee.
Be thankful this isn't Smell-o-Vision.
What this photo doesn't show (thankfully) is the Belgian approach to public toilets: literally, public toilets. Meaning open-air slashers on street corners. And yes, the Belgian male populace were happy to drop trou and water the plastic even in brilliant mid-afternoon sunshine. And noone thought this was in any way odd.
Belgians are odd.
QED. But what could realistically be expected of a country famous solely for soapy beer, chocolate and pedophiles?
From our Latest Advances in Soapy Beer files: Hoegaarden Citron. Soap with lemon flavouring. Think Sunlight dishwashing liquid with carbonation.
European universities are run-down shitholes.
The main lecture block at the University of Gent resembled a cross between the access tunnels at St James Station on Sydney's decrepit City Circle underground, and a tiled urinal from a '60s pub.
We are shit hot.
We might be from the other side of the world, but scientifically, we've got the Eurotrash covered. Our patented brand of 'Break stuff to figure out how it works' science had Engerland and the Continent's finest running scared. Or, in the case of the boss' old boss, making very dubious excuses. 'Sure we can't do any functional studies in our model system, but the advantage of that is it's easier to come up with hypotheses...' Which you, erm, can't test.
Afrikaans may be the language of love, but Flemish Dutch gets the chicks hotter, wetter and nastier than a dockworker's armpit.
On a related topic, the Flemish Dutch for 'Art' is 'Kunst'. Appropriately. Particularly appropriately given that the Museum of Contemporary Art translates as 'Museum Actuele Kunst'...
...which is quite fitting since I've always maintained contemporary art is actually a load of old vag.
Of all the European races to get on the piss with at a European conference, the best by far are Australians and New Zealanders.
Which was why our tribe of drunks comprised me, two Kiwis, three girls from Queensland and a couple of lost Poms and Seppos.
Russians can't hold their piss.
Judging by the pair of sorry fuckers who attached themselves to our party after the conference dinner, nicknamed 'Gropie' and 'Fightie' based on their preferred means of interaction with our peeps. Interesting fact: the current poo-fight in South Ossetia was instigated by Russia getting fucked off by Georgia talking to a girl Russia was interested in, and Georgia's mates telling Russia to fuck off when Russia tried to get friendly.
Londoners could use cheering the fuck up. Seriously.
Ever wondered why no Londoners actually work in hospitality in London anymore? It's because they're shit at being hospitable. And because the one million Poles have to do something (other than holding up the power lines of course.) The Cockney shuttle bus driver who took us to our hotel on our first hours in London genuinely looked in hideous discomfort as a result of us paying him to do the job he was employed to do.
This is largely because:
The English are genetically inferior to Australians and New Zealanders.
Think of the settlement of the Antipodes as an experiment in targeted evolution. Take all your resourceful, entrepreneurial, risk-taking adventurers - either by rounding up volunteer migrants or by locking up a bunch of petty criminals and Irish nationalists - and remove them from your gene pool, to send them tens of thousands of miles to the other side of the world. Is it any wonder their offspring go on to be a bunch of self-motivated, intelligent, competitive, authority-ignoring hard cases who routinely kick your arse at any sort of competitive meeting, sporting or intellectual? Or why the genetic flotsam that stayed home are such a sorry bunch of gits? Whose only recognisable features seem to be (a) whinging and (b) the ability to spontaneously self-aggregate into a queue when in gatherings of three or more? Britain's Sports minister declared in the papers that they were on track for a record haul of medals at Beijing; unfortunately noone pointed out that competitive queueing is only a non-medal demonstration sport at this games, though obviously it's in for London 2012. Give an Englishman the opportunity to be in a queue, and then to be able to whinge about being in a queue, and you've got an Englishman who's mere seconds away from combusting with delight. Which, of course, he will whinge about.
The only reason anyone bothers painting pedestrian crossings on European roads is to give approaching drivers sighting marks to line up their targets.
Though you may be in the right, the ensuing argument may be difficult to win, given the language barrier and the fact they're in a car. I find loud swearing works quite well.
The Tube rocks.
Literally. Though usually it just wallows like a harpooned whale. Time for a bit of trackwork methinks lads? Or, in the great British tradition of patronising euphemism, 'planned engineering'?
All the well-worn, long-standing cliches about English food and drink are well-worn, long-standing cliches because of one simple fact. They're true.
The food's awful, the coffee's hideous (burnt and bitter, as results from turning your espresso machine up to Vulcanize like a prize fuckwit) and the beer's warm. Even when it's thirty degrees outside.
You know things are grim when this bucket of arse starts looking a winner.
I am an accent slut.
Seriously, get me away from home for just a week or so and I'll pick up anything you've got. Five days in Flanders field and I'm sounding like John Travolta in Goldmember.
Is good, yessh?
In the words of TISM: London. The five hundred most snooty people think something's important. Big fuckin' whoopie.
Yeah, London's OK. It's a big city. People everywhere, stuff happening. But it's not worth the price of admission. Quite why generations of kids from both sides of the ditch are compelled to fling themselves at it like moths to a blue electric zappy thing is a bit beyond me.
And Jesus suffering fuck is it a dash on the exxy side.
Streetside parking lot in average London side-street. Or maybe the Historic Supercars display at the British Motor Show. I don't remember which.
Singapore Airlines have some fuck-off weird ideas of what constitutes breakfast.
Pork vermicelli? At 6am? Not even superhot Asian poontang in a silk full body condom is convincing me that's a good idea. I'll have the rubberized omelette thanks Chung Li.
And finally - read your ticket stub. It speaks the truth.
Mine is from the HANNspree World Superbike Round at Brands Hatch, and says the following: 'WARNING: Motorsport can be DANGEROUS. Despite the organisers taking all reasonable precautions, unavoidable accidents can happen. In respect of these you are present at your own risk.'
We had a fantastic day at the Superbikes. We watched bikes, drank beer, ate rubbish food and got rained on. Craig Jones didn't have a fantastic day. Craig Jones died last Monday night from injuries he sustained in a hideous crash in the Supersport race. By all accounts he was a lovely lad, great white British hope, career on the up-and-up, leading the race in front of his home crowd, when it all went horribly, horribly wrong for him. And for a mate of his, Kempsey's 2001 World Supersport champion Andrew Pitt, third in line behind Jones when he highsided off his Honda at 200 kays directly into the path of the following freight train, whose own CBR600RR inflicted the injuries which finally did for him. I could talk about how empty platitudes like 'He went doing what he loved' must be for his family, his mates or even Andrew Pitt, or the hideous sinking feeling in my own gut watching them trying to peel him off the tarmac fifty yards from where I was standing, unfurling a bright red curtain to hide the reality from the punters, while the fuckers on the PA chortled on idiotically and oh-so-Englishly as though nothing at all was going on.
Leaving us with two final thoughts: (a) the English are gormless, spineless cunts; and (b) Craig Jones, despite being English, was - is - more a man than anyone who left Brands Hatch on their own two legs that day.
Vale that man.
The Doctor is OUT.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Visiting the Ghents
As you know, I'm shit hot. Hell, if you didn't know it, you wouldn't be reading this. The research game is how I roll; I be in it up to my sack and I be in it fo' tha riches and tha bitches, representin' my peeps and smacking down the perpetrators who dare be frontin'. But you know junior G's, the research game ain't for pretenders. It's not all glamour, sophistication, and hot chicks in skin-tight lab coats that go right up to breakfast time. Sometimes we also get to go on massive fuck-off aeroplanes on massive fuck-off junkets at taxpayer-research-funded expense.
Which the 2nd European Evolutionary Developmental Biology Meeting is most definitely not.
No.
Not since the cunting fucking organisers moved the conference from Barcelona to Ghent, anyway.
'Who or what is Ghent?' you may ask. I certainly fucking did. So in order to inform and enlighten our audient (singular) here at the World of Bollocks, as well as to have a series of very cheap laughs at the Belgians, we present the world's laziest travel guide, written without having actually visited the fucker. Can I have my Lonely Planet cheque now please?
While we're waiting for that to clear we present:
'Why the fuck?'
Dr Yobbo's Guide to Ghent
Ghent, also known as Gent, Gant, Ghendt, Gout, Goat, Terence and Gurney Gurney Whoopie Fuck, is a regional city in East Flanders, the Dutch speaking part of Belgium.
Belgium: chocolate and pedophiles
Belgium is an irrelevant country in the middle of western Europe where your grandfather's mates are buried because the English are cunts. Belgium, which gained its independence from the Dutch in the 1800s, remains split into two provinces, French-speaking Wallonia in the south and gibberish-speaking Flanders in the rest. Helpfully, and somewhat inevitably, both sides of Belgium hate each other and would rather piss on each other than communicate constructively. As a result they have a reputation for government instability rivalled only by the Italians, Papua New Guinea and the 'gramophone' republics of South America - those with 45 revolutions per minute. Just ask the current PM. He's got time on his hands while he's waiting to see if the King is going to accept his resignation.
Aside from chocolate, pedophiles, female tennis players and fuck-off-scary race circuits, Belgium is most famous for beer. In particular, Trappist ales and lambic beers made with billion year old wild yeasts which impart into the beer delicate tastes of stonefruit, washing detergent and vaginal thrush. The only thing fruitier than the taste are the pretentious ponces who drink the stuff. In particular the highly punishing aficionados of Hoegaarden, a spicy, clove-scented witbier whose name translates rather aptly from Flemish Dutch as 'compost of the prostitute'.
Then again, there's always Wifebeater.
Is Belgium irrelevant?
Try and name three famous Belgians.
Go on.
Plastic Bertrand doesn't count.
Flanders: dull as fu-diddly-uck
The capital of Flanders is Brussels, which is also capital of Belgium, the EU, and Sprouts. Flanders is divided into five prefectures, each duller than the rest. The tortured existence of Belgian politics can be summated by the following excerpt from Flanders' Wikipedia entry:
The largest city in Flanders, other than Brussels, which is in Flanders but isn't actually considered part of Flanders for administrative purposes, except that it's the official capital of Flanders... God my brain hurts... anyway the next biggest city in Flanders is Antwerp, site of the dullest Olympics in history in which nothing of note actually happened, largely because the sporting public of several participating nations was still buried in the surrounding countryside on account of World War I.
Fuck that, let's talk about Ghent
Need to find the Ghents?
Ghent is the third-biggest city in Belgium with some 230,000 inhabitants, less than you'd expect of whom want to top themselves. It lies at the intersection of European Highways E40 and E17 (no relation) and has the third busiest railway station in Belgium. Oh Christ, my face is falling off this is so fucking dull.
History: Pimpin' since 1775
Ghent wasn't always so face-unfasteningly dull. As early as the late Middle Ages, or indeed as late as the early Middle Ages, Ghent was one of the largest and richest cities in Europe, on the back of the flourishing textile industry.
Until the 13th century only Homosexual Pareeee housed more peeps, perps and lo-ridas. Then a bunch of wars happened and shit began to occur and fuck me if the whole thing didn't go tits-up like Pammy Anderson outside a Goldie KFC. Trade with the Poms went to shit during and after the Hundred Years War. After a spate of 14th century council amalgamations the Ghentites cracked the shits with having to pay heavy taxes to some clown in Burgundy, rarked up and got smacked down. Then after the Spanish Empire rolled into Dodge, Charles V (born in Ghent, later Emperor of Spain - the European transfer market was invented long before football found a use for it) beat the snot out of his townspeeps following the Revolt of Ghent (1539) where again taxation without representation got the locals a bit peeved, figuring the high taxes were just used to fund starting wars overseas, including the controversial War on Terra (Latin for land, given they were trying to invade Italy at the time.) Chucky V personally rolled back into his hometown to suppress the rebellion and obliged the city's nobles to walk in front of him, barefoot and with a noose (Dutch: strop) around the neck. He then proceeded to rip up the town in a way that would make Amy Winehouse look like a debilitated crack whore (huh? Oh really? Oh) and basically took a massive shit in his own nest. Since this incident the people of Ghent have taken on the sobriquet Stroppendragers (noose bearers) in a desperate attempt to seem interesting. In the ensuing centuries, the city was fucked over more times than a lap dancer in an English rugby team's hotel, only regaining some dignity once the Dutch took charge after the Battle of Waterloo, gifting the city a university and restoring port access to the sea. Which lasted a whole 15 years until the Belgian Revolution...
History: reminding you that people aren't just fucked, they've always been fucked.
Things to do in Ghent
And my favoured option:
In conclusion, one can expect one's visit to Ghent to be both fun and educational.
London, however, will just be fucking epic.
The Doctor is OUT (to try and shambles together some results for his conference talk.)
Which the 2nd European Evolutionary Developmental Biology Meeting is most definitely not.
No.
Not since the cunting fucking organisers moved the conference from Barcelona to Ghent, anyway.
'Who or what is Ghent?' you may ask. I certainly fucking did. So in order to inform and enlighten our audient (singular) here at the World of Bollocks, as well as to have a series of very cheap laughs at the Belgians, we present the world's laziest travel guide, written without having actually visited the fucker. Can I have my Lonely Planet cheque now please?
While we're waiting for that to clear we present:
'Why the fuck?'
Dr Yobbo's Guide to Ghent
Ghent, also known as Gent, Gant, Ghendt, Gout, Goat, Terence and Gurney Gurney Whoopie Fuck, is a regional city in East Flanders, the Dutch speaking part of Belgium.
Belgium: chocolate and pedophiles
Belgium is an irrelevant country in the middle of western Europe where your grandfather's mates are buried because the English are cunts. Belgium, which gained its independence from the Dutch in the 1800s, remains split into two provinces, French-speaking Wallonia in the south and gibberish-speaking Flanders in the rest. Helpfully, and somewhat inevitably, both sides of Belgium hate each other and would rather piss on each other than communicate constructively. As a result they have a reputation for government instability rivalled only by the Italians, Papua New Guinea and the 'gramophone' republics of South America - those with 45 revolutions per minute. Just ask the current PM. He's got time on his hands while he's waiting to see if the King is going to accept his resignation.
Aside from chocolate, pedophiles, female tennis players and fuck-off-scary race circuits, Belgium is most famous for beer. In particular, Trappist ales and lambic beers made with billion year old wild yeasts which impart into the beer delicate tastes of stonefruit, washing detergent and vaginal thrush. The only thing fruitier than the taste are the pretentious ponces who drink the stuff. In particular the highly punishing aficionados of Hoegaarden, a spicy, clove-scented witbier whose name translates rather aptly from Flemish Dutch as 'compost of the prostitute'.
Then again, there's always Wifebeater.
Is Belgium irrelevant?
Try and name three famous Belgians.
Go on.
Plastic Bertrand doesn't count.
Flanders: dull as fu-diddly-uck
The capital of Flanders is Brussels, which is also capital of Belgium, the EU, and Sprouts. Flanders is divided into five prefectures, each duller than the rest. The tortured existence of Belgian politics can be summated by the following excerpt from Flanders' Wikipedia entry:
Immediately after its establishment, the region [of Flanders] transferred all its constitutional competencies to the Flemish Community. The current Flemish authorities (Flemish parliament, Flemish government) therefore represent all the Flemish people, including those living in the Brussels-Capital Region. Hence, the Flemish Region is governed by the Flemish Community institutions. However, members of the Flemish Community parliament who were elected in Brussels-Capital Region, have no right to vote on Flemish regional affairs.Got all that? Good. If you do, please explain it to the Flemish, they've been scratching their heads for a hundred years or more.
The largest city in Flanders, other than Brussels, which is in Flanders but isn't actually considered part of Flanders for administrative purposes, except that it's the official capital of Flanders... God my brain hurts... anyway the next biggest city in Flanders is Antwerp, site of the dullest Olympics in history in which nothing of note actually happened, largely because the sporting public of several participating nations was still buried in the surrounding countryside on account of World War I.
Fuck that, let's talk about Ghent
Need to find the Ghents?
Ghent is the third-biggest city in Belgium with some 230,000 inhabitants, less than you'd expect of whom want to top themselves. It lies at the intersection of European Highways E40 and E17 (no relation) and has the third busiest railway station in Belgium. Oh Christ, my face is falling off this is so fucking dull.
History: Pimpin' since 1775
Ghent wasn't always so face-unfasteningly dull. As early as the late Middle Ages, or indeed as late as the early Middle Ages, Ghent was one of the largest and richest cities in Europe, on the back of the flourishing textile industry.
Until the 13th century only Homosexual Pareeee housed more peeps, perps and lo-ridas. Then a bunch of wars happened and shit began to occur and fuck me if the whole thing didn't go tits-up like Pammy Anderson outside a Goldie KFC. Trade with the Poms went to shit during and after the Hundred Years War. After a spate of 14th century council amalgamations the Ghentites cracked the shits with having to pay heavy taxes to some clown in Burgundy, rarked up and got smacked down. Then after the Spanish Empire rolled into Dodge, Charles V (born in Ghent, later Emperor of Spain - the European transfer market was invented long before football found a use for it) beat the snot out of his townspeeps following the Revolt of Ghent (1539) where again taxation without representation got the locals a bit peeved, figuring the high taxes were just used to fund starting wars overseas, including the controversial War on Terra (Latin for land, given they were trying to invade Italy at the time.) Chucky V personally rolled back into his hometown to suppress the rebellion and obliged the city's nobles to walk in front of him, barefoot and with a noose (Dutch: strop) around the neck. He then proceeded to rip up the town in a way that would make Amy Winehouse look like a debilitated crack whore (huh? Oh really? Oh) and basically took a massive shit in his own nest. Since this incident the people of Ghent have taken on the sobriquet Stroppendragers (noose bearers) in a desperate attempt to seem interesting. In the ensuing centuries, the city was fucked over more times than a lap dancer in an English rugby team's hotel, only regaining some dignity once the Dutch took charge after the Battle of Waterloo, gifting the city a university and restoring port access to the sea. Which lasted a whole 15 years until the Belgian Revolution...History: reminding you that people aren't just fucked, they've always been fucked.
Things to do in Ghent
- Leave
- Drink
- Look at old buildings
- Get bored of that shit after about 5 minutes
- Laugh at fat American tourists with their matching checked shirts tucked into pastel slacks, cameras around neck and dazed Starbucks-withdrawal eyes
- Make piss-awful jokes about being 'stuck in the Ghents'
- Start some sort of strop (see what I did there?)
- Avoid the park after dark in case you're mistaken for a homosexual, in which case you will either have your bottom violated by another homosexual or beaten up by dickheads pretending they are not indeed latent homosexuals (note: this may not apply if you are actually a homosexual)
- Actually go to the conference you're meant to be attending rather than sitting around on street-side cafes swilling Leffe Blonde and staring at chicks
- Try not to fall in, that looks pretty fucking rank in there
And my favoured option:
- Get back on the Eurostar as soon as the meeting's over and fuck off to London to sink piss with Sorbs and Chris and go watch the Superbikes at Brands Hatch
In conclusion, one can expect one's visit to Ghent to be both fun and educational.
London, however, will just be fucking epic.
The Doctor is OUT (to try and shambles together some results for his conference talk.)
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