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.

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.

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.

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.'

Megan Fox has vowed never to stop talking about her sex life.
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....

Oh for fuck's sake. Did they not, love?

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.

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.

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.

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.