I got two fitty

The World of Bollocks, nee The Weak In Sport, here celebrates its 250th post. Since the debut of this august tome in its current Bloggeriffic format in January 2006, it could be said we've literally made every post a winner. Except we'd be LYING. That one about the history of the Ford rally team was not a winner. It was the epitome of Fucking Dull in point of fact.

To the news of the week:

Les Paul passes away aged 94.
To be buried in sunburst maple coffin with trapezoidal pickups.

What, too soon?

I don't play guitar and what I know about guitars is mainly through rock-fan osmosis or from research done for In The Worst Possible Taste. But I know enough to know that the Gibson Les Paul IS rock music. As much, if not more so, than its great rival (if inanimate creations of wood and steel can be gratuitously anthropomorphised to the extent of having rivals) the Fender Stratocaster. Think Rock And/Or Roll and you the distinctive curve of a Les Paul or the pointy bits of a Strat. Or maybe the even pointer bits of a SG, or the flat-out hair-metal stupidity of a Flying V or an X-Plorer. Point is, you might not know the names, and nor could you be arsed finding them out unless you were writing a novel about a slightly second-hand alternative rock performer of the early Naughties, but you know the shapes and silhouettes: Angus Young (the real one) sweating over his red SG, Hendrix playing his left-handed-strung Strat backwards, upside-down and with his teeth; Pete Townshend windmilling his Les Paul Special on the way to industrial deafness and possibly a shoulder reconstruction.

So, in short: the Gibson Les Paul and its dodgy knockoffs was, is and evermore will remain Rock and Roll. Les Paul himself did much more than just give his name to a kick-arse rick guitar, but London to a brick it's what his name will live forever for.


Just like that Irish bloke who used to work for Fender, Strat O'Caster.

Of course, the best forum in which to hear Mr Paul and Mr O'Caster's legacies employed in the manner to which they were intended is to listen to modern rock radio. Nah, just kidding. Find your local classic rock station and glue the dial knob there and there only. Or, move to New Zealand, which appears to have not one but TWO high-quality nationally syndicated rock FM stations. Which, at my last count, was two more than Australia had. (Sorry Nat.) The imaginatively named The Rock FM takes the role of the New Rock station, while Radio Hauraki, previously a classic rock station, has aggressively repositioned itself in The Rock's face with a much recenter(erer) playlist, while still cranking the legendary shit it built its demographic on (Stones, Who, Zeppelin, Purple, Sabbath.) FM radio may be the last bastion of Gen X, given that the fluoro-clad nuff nuffs of Y have, like, too short an attention span for, like... oh look is that totally like Andrew G from Idol?

I've learned new things too since I've started listening to the radio again. I had NO IDEA Whitesnake had released more than one song, let alone as many as seem to turn up on NZ rock radio. I had no idea I still knew every word to Kenny Wayne Shepherd's Blue On Black despite having never owned the song in any format or particularly liked it, just heard it more than a couple of times on Triple M Sydney about ten years ago - the downside of my method of undergrad uni exam study was that not only did the course I was cramming at the time get absorbed, but so did whatever else I was listening to at the time.

But most of all, I've learned that while as the Divinyls put it, there's a fine line between pleasure and pain; it's more pertinent to note that as David St Hubbins from Spinal Tap observed, there's a fine line between stupid and clever.

For those who would question the above, I give you Choad Kroeger and Nickelback. And their mainstream rockchart hit (with a capital 'S'), 'Something In Your Mouth':

Got to meet the hottie with the million dollar body
They say it's over budget but you'd pay her just to touch it
COME OWWWWN!!!

For. Fuck's. Sake. And it gets Even Betterer:

You're rip'n up the dance floor honey
(You naughty woman)
You shake your ass around for everyone
(You're such a mover)
I love the way you dance with anybody
(The way you swing)
And tease them all by sucking on your thumb.

Anyone see where this might be headed?

You're so much cooler when you never pull it out
'Cause you look so much cuter
With something in your mouth.

Now if that's not the lardiest slab of spray-on lyrical cheese since Kurt Cobain killed off the last of the Sunset Strip hair farmers, I don't fucking know what is.

Rank and venal hypocrisy, I hear you cry. This from the responsible grown-up behind such lyrics as 'I wanna be Angus Young, he's thunderstruck; I wanna be Angus Young, half his fuckin' luck.' (You wait until we get to Beef Week Queen. That's a fucking pearler. 'I want the Beef Week Queen, she likes her red meat if you know what I mean... I want the Beef Week Queen, she’s dressed for success, and relatively clean... I want the Beef Week Queen, knows her Brahman from her Limousin... Not so hot but I don’t care, she just wants it medium rare...')

The point is, and it's a horrendous one to have to come to terms with, because it's a desperate indictment on society today:

Choad and his Canadifriends aren't actually taking the piss.

Angus is taking the piss - both the fake one and his elderly namesake. Most of the Sunset Strip hair farmers were taking the piss too, or at least were aware it was all a big fucking joke. Choady Boy, as near as I can tell, is dead serious when he gurns like a constipated wrestler, 'You look so much cuter with something in your mouth.' What, pray tell? Chewing gum? Dentures? Her retainer? At least he could have added 'Take out your fuckin' retainer, put it in your purse.'

Nickelback need to be driven into the sea at the sharpened point of a thousand bayonets. This is scientific fact.

However, in these depressed, recessionary times, it's good to see that some people still have job satisfaction.


The Doctor I mean, not the podium girl. Though one wonders however if there is a literal Czech translation for 'camel toe'.

The Doctors (all of the above) are OUT.