Bibendum bounces back

It's a sick, uneasy feeling. A feeling of inherent wrongness, but nonetheless, a feeling I can't shake. One I have to face up to. One that, while it may make me less of a man, one which is undeniable. Inescapable.

I kinda want Argentina to win the World Cup.

Yeah, I know, I know. They're fuckers. They're cheats and they're scum. Here's what we (the Royal We) said about them last World Cup:

Argentine football has had a lot said about it, much of it derogatory, and much of it by the English tabloid media, given the long history of on- and off-field war between the two countries. To get a balanced, objective viewpoint it's necessary to put all this racist rhetoric aside, and look at the facts. So let’s dismiss all the negative stereotypes and talk honestly and fairly about the Argies.

They are nasty, dirty, cheating, stinking, diving, spitting, simulating, handballing bastards. Every last fuckin' one of them.

That aside, they are genuine candidates for the big tin cup this time around, twenty years on from their last title at Mexico '86. They have an excellent crop of young players coming through (reigning Olympic and World Youth Cup champions), have plenty of skill at all positions, and are one of the few teams that can beat Brazil.

But they're still cheating bastards who need a kick in the arse, and the Weak in Sport hopes they go out miserably in the first round like '02. That was piss-funny.

Who ate all the pies?
Mention Argentina in a footballing sense and there's only one image that springs to mind: Maradona. Actually, there's two images that spring to mind there. One is of Maradona in a blue shirt carving up the entire England team bar the bus driver and the guy who cuts the half-time oranges to score his second goal in that infamous quarter-final at Mexico '86; the is other of a Michelin Man-sized Maradona being wheeled into rehab on a ventilator looking like a cross between Skasey's final days on Mallorca and Marlon Brando in The Island of Dr Moreau. Thus was the dichotomy of old mate Diego the Dago: a brilliant talent as a footballer, but a total fucking idiot as a human being. Then again, like the Chili Peppers in the early '90s, he did all his greatest work while completely off-chops on narcotics - he was allegedly introduced to cocaine playing for Barcelona in 1984 - so perhaps Charlie IS a performance enhancing drug and Dell had the right idea after all.

Things go better with Coke

But that's kinda the point. Somehow, for some reason based nowhere in logic or rationality and everywhere in fuck-it-let's-have-a-crack, Diego Maradona has gone from being freelance Bibendum impersonator to the coach of the Argentine national football team in the 2010 World Cup. And that's just about fucking mad enough to give props to. Sure, Maradona's a cheat, a scumbag, a druggie, an egotist, a liar, a fraud, a clown, a joke, a fool to himself and an embarrassment to his nation. But he winds the Poms up, and that's enough for us.

Bibendum (artist's impression)

Add to that the genius of Lionel Messi - the genius of being the greatest and arsiest footballer on Earth while yet still sporting a mullet not even a Status Quo roadie would be brave enough to roll with - as well as the mad skillz of the clinical Diego Milito, the sturdy Javier Mascherano, the prehistoric Martin Palermo and a bunch of other guys with Italian surnames and Spanish first names, and you've got... a side not good enough to win the World Cup. But by fuck they're going to be entertaining. On the pitch or otherwise. This week alone, Diego's run over a cameraman's foot, left Zanetti, Cambiasso and Riquelme out of his squad, and declared he'll do a nude run through Buenos Aires if his charges win the World Cup. Which they won't do, but by fuck it'd be funny if they did.

Just in case Diego honours his pledge though, probably best to listen in on the radio.

The Doctor is OUT.

3DHDTVLOLWTF?

Anyone else hoping 3D TV turns out to be the most massive, embarrassing, irrelevant, expensive clusterfuck of a marketing failure since Betamax met iSnack 2.0?

Yup. Thought so.

3D TV is more pointless than Kyle Sandilands and seems equally as egregiously cretinous. Noone wants to sit in their living rooms wearing noddy fucking glasses watching Charlie fucking Sheen's bowling shirted beer gut leering out of the screen on Two And A Half Jokes. And anyone who does is just about stupid enough to (a) be the target demographic for aforesaid bucket of shite and (b) deserve to piss a fuckload of money away on an orphan platform targeted at the clawingly aspirational and the congenitally stupid, and plugged with desperate ferocity by sinking, failing free-to-air networks. As demonstrated last eve by Rabs, Sterlo, Tugga, Donkey, Simmo, Wonka and Dickhead* on Nine's Origin coverage - trumped by 48 hours for First Live 3D Sports Broadcast Evarrrr Ish by Fox Sports' Socceroos-All Whites coverage, in exactly the sort of pathetic display of one-upmanship you'd expect from Unky Rupert's trained monkeys.

*Note: Some of these former footballers may not exist


The reasons for 3D TV's inevitable glorious failure are longer than God's own schlong and equally as disquieteningly gnarled. Noone who wears glasses is going to want to wear a pair of oversized 3D safety goggles designed to fit around them, or go put contacts in just for the experience of a disturbing surround-stereo image of the Mad Monk's Speedo package on the nightly news. Most TV gains nothing from being in 3D. Shooting in 3D takes twice the time, effort, expense and carbon. And, besides all that, it's a wank. So fuck it with a big pointy stick. On this you can be sure: I will buy a 3D TV the day after my sex change operation.

The Doctor is OUT.

The world is not enough

But it's a fairly decent place to start. The World Cup's only weeks away which means it's well overdue for the wheels of marketing bullshit to start turning. Nike's World Cup ads are fairly legendary - the one with Eric Cantona MCing cage football on a container ship springs to mind - and their latest effort stays on message once more. That message being 'Hello, we're Nike, we're complete wankers, and every football player we sponsor is a massively self-involved narcissistic tosser.'



As I said.

(Check it out here for the full wanktastic HD effect.)

Admittedly, throughout their slimy history, Nike and narcissistic tossers have always gone together like battered Volvos and hat-wearing parkers-by-Braille - case in point a certain high-profile golfer with a predilection for over-playing his long irons - so it shouldn't be much of a surprise that the Sweatshop Of Swoosh seems to have cornered the market in footballing douchebags. But the egregious scope of their vanity - and by reflection that of their sponsored representatives - seems astonishing, even for the firm responsible for the technicolour vomit of the 1997 Super League jerseys. Dragging the Simpsons into their tawdry circlejerk, not for any credible reason, just because they could - not to mention a fairly bemused looking Kobe Bryant - is precisely the sort of conspicuous act of masterbation which has rightly identified them as the sporting world's greatest twunts.

Still, at least Kobe has something in common with the bloke he's meant to be imitating, Ronaldinho. Neither of the bastards will be at the World Cup.

The Doctor is OUT. Like Ron. And Adriano, and Ballack, and Beckham, and Totti...

Like a version

'You ain't seen the best of us yet,' declared Tim Rogers in his curious yeehaa-Cletus twang on the only decent song from You Am I's last album. Patent nonsense, of course. We saw the best of them long ago, well before their punting from Sony-BMG and Timmah's pills-'n'-voddy-fuelled breakdown at the Falls. The 'best of them' might encompass those four consecutive number one albums, f'rinstance. Tracks like Berlin Chair, Mr Milk, Cathy's Clown, Rumble (particularly apt for the subliminal shoutout to Ronnie James D.I.O.), so on and so forth. You Am I might be shadows of shadows of their former selves these days, but they do get to go through the macabrely fascinating equivalent of outliving their own children - they've outlasted the biggest and shiniest of all the up-and-coming bands who once played support to them. Shortly, they're playing on the undercard of Powderfinger's farewell tour. Still, they were better before Timmah decided he needed to start singing in a fucking Seppo accent.

Which brings us to Kiwi soft-rockers the Feelers - think the Shakies' Own version of Powderfinger, except with even less substance - who've been contracted to provide the Official Song of the forthcoming Rugby World Cup 2011 (also Shakies' Own) and have in turn extruded a strained and haemmorroidal version of Right Here, Right Now which may in fact be the worst cover version of any song ever recorded anywhere by anyone ever. The song in question is, I should note, the decade-turning one-hit-wonder penned by Jeezarse Jones, rather than Fatboy Slim's variant thereof. This does not in any way make it any more listenable. Evidence thereof as follows.




Even walrus-faced NZ current affairs host Mark Sainsbury has his mo in a twist over the shitness of their efforts. Granted, the gripe appears to be that they haven't used Dave fucking Dobbyn. But the point remains: this is the worst cover song of all time. Even Sid Vicious' version of My Way had irony to recommend it. It's not merely that the Feelers' reading of the tune is as lame and as milquetoast as everything they've ever recorded; it's that lead whiner James Reid can't help but choke as he tries to reach for the high notes. Much like the All Blacks themselves in rugby world cups, come to think of it.

Worst. Cover. Ever.

Or... is it?

Because that would ignore Puff Diddly's catastrophic Godzilla-soundtrack remake of Led Zep's Kashmir. Which, on principle, is up there with Srebrenica.

Tell me I'm wrong.

The Doctor is OUT.

More arse than class

DISCLAIMER: The World of Bollocks would like to point out that it is NSFW (Never Safe For Work). And it is sorry. So very, very sorry.

There was a time when Mia Freedman was the spokesbimbette for all that was wrong about the media's attitude to women. Ms Freedman, you see, was the very-high-profile editor of such glossy insubstantive tomes as Dolly, Cleo and Cosmopolitan, offering peerless and penetrating insight on the existential mores of how one should best accessorize one's multiple orgasms while rocking this season's hottest celeb looks. Noone could read her work and not have their intelligence thoroughly insulted. Not even Jackie O. Basically, in the late Nineties and early Naughties, Mia Freedman was a byword for all that was crap about womens' magazines. And this was more than a minor annoyance, as Mia Freedman was at the same time as being destroyer-in-chief of body images across the nation, both unutterly ubiquitous through her endless appearances on panel shows like Good News Week and The Glasshouse, and yet at the same time, as hot as balls. You would have, and you know you would have, so don't pretend you wouldn't have.

Ah, but you see, Ms Freedman had an epiphony. She became a mum, threw in her lot at the ACP Fucktard Factory, and repented all her sins by railing publically against the smug, patronising, degrading, anti-intellectual confabulations of shite she'd once helmed the publication of. From now on, she was only going to write about issues of merit. Issues that mattered to real women. None of this facile, infantile sealed-section smut and titillation. Real issues. Of real importance. To real women.

Which brings us, apparently, to her most recent blog topic: 'Is anal sex the new oral sex?'

*cough* Yeah. I'll give you a moment to wipe that coffee off your screen.

Now look. This thesis of Ms Freedman's in itself has its problems - one which seems quite obvious, and indeed one which Ms Freedman acknowledges, that there's no tactful, responsible, mature way to talk about anal sex. So let's just do the usual and talk a lot of juvenile giggly smut instead.

Anyhoo, the primary issues I can see with the Freedman Position are as follows:

1. Availability of skillbase. First of all, the particular talent sets Catholic schoolgirls have become famous for - as previously reported by Zappa, F (1979) and Peppers, RHC (1985) - may require renegotiation. Furthermore, Alanis Morisette may need to revise her offer to that bloke in that theatre.

2. Philosophy. Your Correspondent once knew a colleague who subscribed to the theory, 'If she swallows, it's true love.' He's still single, obviously. But should that situation ever change, possibly through some form of viral plague or zombie infestation rendering all other available males of the species reproductively null, our friend would have to accept that thanks to the pioneering research of Dr Freedman, his relationship goalposts, the very moral fibres by which he lives his life, would be irrevocably altered. Didn't think about that, didya Freedman. Nah, you didn't. Ay.

3. Bogans like it, so it must be fucking shit. Oh. Erm...

4. Contraception. Regardless of what those pissed munters at your wedding reception were bellowing at every toast, 'Up the bum no babies' is not, in fact, a reliable contraceptive method. Compared with the pill or condoms, which have roughly 98% efficacy against sproggage, what the son of a former Liberal government minister once described while hosting a college function as 'the brownwings' offers only 92% protection. In related news, some of the stuff we learned in our neonatal class was fucking weird.

5. Availability of euphemisms. As alluded to above, without a reasonably SFW euphemism therefor - inclusive of an appropriate capacity for double-entendre, along the lines of industry gold standard 'going down' - there is little hope that back door shenanigans will ever hope to replace the humble BJ in the societal pantheon of Preferred Non-Core Services (Bedroom-Related). The nearest polite term for Teh Buttsex available in modern English is the fairly obscure reference to doing 'Greek' - which is somewhat ironic as that's pretty much what's been done to their economy, and what their economy's done to the Euro. Relatedly, tradesmen are going to need a new entrance, lest their profession be permanently besmirched.

6. It hurts like buggery. Apparently.

In short, it remains to be seen whether Mia's proposal will lead to a more enlightened and broad-minded attitude to sexual relations in this country, or whether it'll just get the bum's rush.

The Doctor is OUT, which is probably for the best.

Tenacious Dio

Dio has rocked for a long, long time,
Now it's time for him to pass the torch.
He has songs of wilderbeests and angels,
He has soared on the wings of a demon.

It's time to pass the torch,
You're too old to rock, no more rockin' for you.
We're takin' you to a home,
But we will sing a song about you.

And we will make sure that you're very well taken care of.
You'll tell us secrets that you've learned. Woah!
Your sauce will mix with ours,
And we'll make a good goulash baby.
Dio, time to go!
You must give your cape and scepter to me!
And a smaller one for KG.

- Tenacious D, 'Dio', 2001


Of all the snowblinded, chemically-impaired munters who e'er manned the pumps of the good ship Black Sabbath - and there were many - it does seem typically rock-and-roll ironic that the first to run down the curtain and join the choir invisible WASN'T, in fact, bipedal pharmacy outlet Mr Ozzy Osbourne, but the man who subbed for him when Oswald's powder fetish got the better of him in '78 - that man being rock god, metal overlord and inventor of the Horned Metal Salute, 'screeching Italianate Diabolist Mister Ronnie James DIO', to quote Twunter's Dr Samuel Johnson.




Drej has a really nice piece over at his joint about Dio and his place in the pantheon of rock gods - I won't disagree with any of what he's said, although I'd be one of those 'many' who disagree with him rating Dio-era Sabbath at or above the level of Ozzy-era Sabbath - to be fair, though, they were as different as two bands can be with only the lead howler substituted. In style, this wasn't swapping Bon for Brian; almost closer to swapping Zack de la Rocha for Chris Cornell. In the end it was just as well the rest of Rage Against the Audioslave kept the receipt.

In fact, there are few surer things than death, taxes, and the fact that noone will remember the result of this world T20 competition by the start of the next one in a month or two, but one of those surer things is that lead singer replacement therapy works about as regularly as homeopathy, and is usually about as scientific. Successes? AC/DC. Van Halen, sort of, even if Hagar-era Halen got progressively more ordinary as they went on. Audiorage, for a couple of albums at least. Faith No More, though they were hardly astride the world when Mr Bungle got the gig. And the Wiggles. That's it. Every other attempt to replace a successful lead singer in a successful rock band has ended in a bucket of distended arse. Particularly if the recruitment methodology involves hiring singers from tribute bands, selecting contenders based on their hovercraft-based miming skills, or being INXS. By comparison with that lot of shite, Dio-era Sabbath comes off a lot closer to Heaven than Hell (see what I did there?)

Dio, 1942-2010. The torch has been passed. To whom, I'm not entirely sure. But suffice to say it ain't Justin fucking Bieber.

The Doctor is OUT.

300

This isn't Sparta. You can probably tell by the lack of abandoned infants and barracks man-on-man action. But it is 300 (posts, for the World of Bollocks nee Weak In Sport). Whoopee fuck. Anyhoo, as per SOP for hundred-post milestones hereabouts, here's the edited highlights of the last century of crap...

The most difficult job in the universe (other than being Madeleine Albright's fluffer)

First half: Chelsea play poorly. Half time: Chelsea get ripped a new set of arseholes. Second half: Chelsea score four goals. Coaching. It's complicated, I tells ya.

Keeping it real

To anyone who's ever had anything to do with a real estate agent in any professional context, whether as a tenant being alternately ignored and persecuted by their property manager, an investment property owner being fed a line of bullshit by the same property manager, a potential buyer being jacked into a Dutch auction solely against themselves, or a prospective seller having an Industrial Revolution's worth of smoke blown up their arse about the prospects of a quick and profitable sale in a market showing less signs of life than Anna Nicole Smith, the concept that professional real estate industry members by and large may in fact be an all-inclusive farrago of douche-felchers will probably not shock or astound.

Get this India

The inaugural IPL had the entertainment qualities of badly dubbed foreign porn - lots of appealing action, even if the plotwork-goings-on were laughably bewildering most of the time.

Getting wet with Kate's dirty sister

Ben Elton once said that the most pressing question facing society at that time was 'the Australian question', which was, as he put it, 'Which of Hi-5 would you shag first?' Here's your answer.

Pearls before swine

Bonus points if you can explain (a) what the fuck this girl is doing to this lizard, and (b) what the fuck it has to do with getting a career in science.

Teenage lobotomy

Dr Yobbo: "Hey, if that Scully chick on the X-Files can do a full DNA sequence analysis on an alien's arsehole in an hour, I can singlehandedly bring forward the science of gene therapy by ten years in half a week."

You've got male (now UPDATED with additional pointless smut)

In the 24 hours to 9am this morning the spam filter intercepted 68 emails, which goes to show how much of a target uni addresses are, as well as suggesting Your Correspondent needs to stop signing up to amateur lesbian porn sites with his work email.

Gabba gabba hey: a photo essay

Six bucks doesn't buy you much these days. A small McArse value meal. A warm can of beer at the Big Day Out. Half an hour with Amy Winehouse. Basically, a lot of nasty skank you wouldn't wipe your arse with if you were desperately short of bum fodder.

You only sing 'cos you're minging

MY OLD MAN, HE TOLD ME
ENGLAND WILL NOT BAT TILL TEA
WITH A NICK-NACK PADDY-WHACK GIVE A DOG A BONE
BARMY ARMY, FUCK OFF HOME

Don't follow me, I'm lost too

I'm on Twunter. Feel free to follow along and watch the inevitable train wreck of cognitive dissonance as Your Correspondent tries to figure out how to make all the unnecessary big words in his verbiage fit within a 140 character limit.

Back by a resounding lack of popular demand...

Compared to our last visit from Captain Stupidity, this post is Ronnie Corbett as compared to Ronnie Barker: same shit jokes, just a lot shorter.

Staying Onatopp of things

Based on the Czech Skorpion machine pistol, a besmirchment over which the Czechs should sue, the Klobb was named after Ken Lobb, one of Goldeneye N64's designers, who everyone must have secretly hated and/or thought was fucking shit at his job.

"To me, a grudge... uz just a place to pork your core"

The primary role of the garage at CD Evo 3 was to house the Brown Hornet and the Future Dr Mrs Dr Yobbo's Subaru. Its real role, though, was as the brewroom for the Old Chateau Dodgy Brewhouse, and the lair for the three seedy individuals who made up the blokey 75% of the leaseholders - Craigos, Yuri and Your Fucken Correspondent.

It's not the drinking, it's how we're drinking

16 year old first year [name deleted] prided herself on being able to sneak into the unibar regardless of the large amounts of security stationed at the perimeters. One night, much to her obvious pride, she managed to pick up an older guy and took him home. Turned out he was the undercover cop stationed at the unibar for the express purpose of unearthing underage drinkers.

The shortest post in the history of the universe

Over here giving unsolicited cookery advice. Such as: never cook with wine you wouldn't be prepared to drink. If it tastes of arse in the glass, it'll taste of date on the plate.

A bunch of chauvinistic misogynist rubbish disguised as high-level rock music comment

Sarah McLeod's awesome. Put it this way: she's from Adelaide, and you still would.

When the levee breaks

Grafton is one of the few places on the NSW North Coast which would be massively improved by being drowned by turd-brown floodwater.. Any Grafton resident who complains about being evacuated to Coffs Harbour is an inbred fucktard. (Actually that sentence would work just as well without the 'who complains about being evacuated to Coffs Harbour' bit.)

Cheech and 'Tang

The Dog and I both played for the college football (round-ball) team, which usually involved me warming the bench while everyone else watched the Dog poncing about holding up the ball in midfield doing stepovers and circus tricks while we waited for someone to lose patience and pole-axe the bastard. Occasionally it was even someone from the other team.

All choads lead to Rome

The Red Devils becoming the first side in the Champions League era to win in consecutive years will palpably fail to prevent the Running of the Chavs through the streets of Rome as 40,000 fat, sunburned, incoherent Englishmen fuelled on pints of the Sponsor's Product distinguish themselves in traditional Englander Abroad style by trashing the Eternal City, throwing up in the Trevi fountain and picking fights with the overdressed local rozzers. Or, less successfully, the incredibly violent local footy thugs.

Over the hills and far away

Our man AJ found himself on the Gold Coast (sounds Biblical, wasn't) last weekend, less than two hours from home and maybe three from work in Grafton, before all the rivers ran and the Pacific Highway was cut in more places than Edward Scissorhands' wanksock.

No Bull

In The Worst Possible Taste (working title) is somewhat autobiographical in that it's got a lot of bits of me and mine in it, just crammed in a blender and pureed until it's hard to remember what stories really happened and what was made up. It's a tribute, of sorts, to those good mates of mine who spent years and years of their lives in pub rock bands and covers outfits, and what might have happened had they been lucky enough (or otherwise) to be in the right place at the right time. And it's a fantastic excuse to write a lot of drinking and gratuitous sex scenes in between the occasional Big Fuck-Off Rock Show.

Tour de Pants

One minor warning: there are rude bits in this. Not just sweary rude. Boy-and-girl-bits-in-fairly-graphic-detail rude. Just so you know. Anyone likely to become offended by such materials is advised to... hang on, what the fuck would you be doing here in the first place?

The second shortest post in the history of the universe

[The art of Hungover Breakfasting, at Mother Foccacia]
The problem with the Big Breakfast is this: it's almost always just a little bit shit.

T20 Cricket World Champs Update from WoBNewsWire

Team management decided to boot Symonds off the tour after consulting with the Senior Leadership Steering Committee Management Group consisting of Australian captain Saint Ricky of Ponting, a smug little shit-eating dwarf who of course has NEVAAARR done anything other than be morally whiter than fucking white his ENTIRE CAREER; coach Tim Nielsen, who apparently does something to do with helping the team win matches, despite recent evidence to the contrary; and vice captain Lara Bingle, a post-op transsexual best known as the 'Who the bloody hell are ya' chick.

Attacked by Rundy Bum

Rum may have a reputation for reasons it doesn't deserve. Then again maybe it does. In any case, my fifteen minutes are up. Good night.

World T20 Update II: Gayle blows, everyone else sucks

New Zealand defeated Scotland in a heavily rain-affected match which was reduced to one ball per side. New Zealand equalled Scotland's target of six, resulting in a tied result. The match was subsequently decided in NZ's favour by a six-ball Super Over eliminator.

The dumbest thing I have seen in a long, long time

When the fuck did the Systeme International approve the use of 'number of people you can fly to Hawaii' as the official SI unit of energy measurement? Do they get to come back as well? Are they flying Air NZ? Will Air NZ lose their bags? (Actually, that's not a question, that's a given.)

Adventures in understeer: the Cheng Shin Experience

There are things that I don't piss about with or skimp on, because the short-term economic payoff just ain't worth the long-term (or even short-term) misery. Things like coffee. Toilet paper. Bacon. Smack, of course. And tyres.

Angus and Uncle Sam's High School Reunion

I shared a house with a girl called Karen in St Lucia for six months (along with uberlegendary flatmate Dr Cletus) and she was crazy. Not Crazy John’s crazy, not “I’m crazy and therefore I’ll give you large discounts on Telstra-branded mobile communications products” crazy; Karen was more along the lines of “not paying her share of any bills and never going to lectures and never going to work and dressing up like a Goth and changing her name to Desparia and hanging by her ankles from the ceiling of her room on some sort of goddamn trapeze thing” crazy.

NZ vs France at Carisbrook: a photo essay

Jesus suffering fuck New Zealand's shit at rugby.
More highly intellectual analysis of the sporting oeuvre just as soon as this fucking hangover lifts.

World T20 Update III: and suddenly the stunt goes horribly wrong

Cricket Australia have called up nuggety NSW captain Simon Katich, originally left out of the side under the 'Kasey Chambers' provision in the selection criteria, i.e. he's Not Pretty Enough.

In the worst possible taste

The serialised adventures of Andy 'Angus' Young and the lads from Flange Gasket will be progressively updated at http://flangegasket.blogspot.com. It's dumb but it's fun, somewhat like the music the Gasket crank out. Or Angus' usual taste in women. Your pick.

A few of my favourite things. Very few. One, in fact.

I've taken the BUGA UP methodology and applied it to other industries with highly dubious (if not completely faulty) moral compasses, like real estate. Peeling the plastic letters off For Sale signs, changing the message and (most importantly) replanting the sign as-was is a critical part of such civil disobedience.

World T20 Update The Revenge

Yesterday's ICC World T20 Final between Australia and Pakistan, the most keenly anticipated game of international T20 cricket since the last one, was washed out without a ball being bowled, English weather being the complete fucking slut that it is. The match was decided by a game of rock-scissors-paper, won by a poker-faced Shane Warne who went rock to Younis Khan's scissors. Asked if this seemed to be a massive anti-climax, Warne replied, "Not compared to the one I gave KP's missus."

All the news that's fit. Innit.

“And while we’re at it,” Lena continued, clearly just warming up, “why are they always fucking pilates instructors? Or fucking swimsuit models, or fucking soapie starlets, or fucking ballerinas, or fucking Channel Ten newsreaders?”
“I never touched Ron Wilson,” I replied. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Generation J

In The Worst Possible Taste, when you reduce it down to its most basic essence, is a love story between me and the rock music Triple J introduced me to.
And cars.
And chicks with big tits.

Generation J: Additional

Eleven IS one louder than ten, it's true.

The Lions get red-shirted... and Tuqiri goes Tah-Tahs

Now, obviously, I'm not qualified to make a comment on rugby union, being as though I went to a government school and have never seen a soggy Sao in my life, but one pertinent point occurs to me. What's the fucking point of Lions tours if they never win a fucking game?

Borats on bikes

Enjoy Le Tour. Even if just for the hotties in the frocks on the presentation dais at the end of the day.


I'm guessing they draw straws to see who has to end up in the polka-dot ones.

Delusions of adequacy

I've clearly missed something. Something big. And I've missed it not by a small margin, as separated Lance from yellow this morning, but by a lot, as separated Nate Myles from the bowl a few mornings prior.

All hands against his own

Is this the most heroically gratuitous restaurant marketing campaign in the history of heroically gratuitous marketing campaigns?
Menu looks good though. Anyone else wondering what their seafood course is like?

Don't (don't don't don't) believe the hype

It'll be interesting - possibly the only thing left which WILL be interesting in this tour, given the flat stages belong to the Manx Mong and everything else to Astana - to see what the American sports media, which usually misses the nuance of tactic-heavy Euro team sports, makes of Their Golden Boy effectively being prevented from directly contending for victory by his own team. Whether he was ever up to it isn't really the point.

World Wide Web

The nation can finally smile again, for the first time in eight years. Because MARK WEBBER FINALLY RAN OUT OF WAYS TO FUCK UP A GRAND PRIX. AT LAST. I declare a National Day of Celebration. Let's all go and sit on the side of the road with the bonnet up in honour of him.

On shaky ground

Steve Price is a good bloke. But Jesus Christ he can't fight.

I just wasn't made for these times

Would I trade my safe, secure, ABS and airbagged modern family chariot for a snarling Monaro GTS or even a Hemi six-pack Charger? If we're trading the heavily policed dual carriageways of modern times for the unrestricted two-lane blacktop of pre-1971 'Straya... hell yeah. Just as I'd trade the South Sydney side of 2009 for the Souths side of 1971, cos they actually WON SHIT. But dammit, who wouldn't? Who wouldn't trade Ricky Ponting for Ian Chappell, Mitchell Johnson for Dennis Lillee or Michael Clarke for Dougie Walters? Who wouldn't trade Lara Bingle for Brigitte Bardot? The Kings of Leon for Led Zeppelin? Kevin Rudd for Gough Whitlam? Pure Blonde for Something Actually Fucking Drinkable?

He's been doing it all day sir

My family is fully sick. Which is not to say they are a subwoofer in a lowered Civic owned by an adolescent gentleman from Punchbowl, but that they are all nursing head colds.

Gratituous cross-promotional exercise

Go here, read this. Cooking is really just experimental science, and furthermore if an experiment's worth doing it's worth doing once, dodgily, and published before anyone asks too many questions.

To everything there is a season

Spring has sprung. Well, not here. In Hungary. The spring in question being one off a BrawnGP Formula One car, which has sprung into the locality of one Felipe Massa to the detriment of his continued interest in the sport.

America: f**k yeah

Plymouth Barracuda with a 383 Hemi and a plutonium-green paintjob. See this one around town occasionally. Numberplate reads 'SAVGAS' (suffixed in small text with 'FOR ME TO USE')

I got two fitty

Choad Kroeger, 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.'

Body paint and magic dirt

Suffice to say that Palmerston North is not a place you want to be. Imagine a tenth-scale model of Adelaide, except without the interest or excitement.

Hard to kill

NZ loves a Subaru. Even if the illiterate fuckers can't pronounce the name properly. They seem to think it should be said with the accent on the second syllable, presumably as it'd be if it was a Maori word - suBAAAru. Either that or it's some sort of self-perpetuating sheep joke.

I hate stupid people

I've been told I'm only angry because I'm an Aries and I can't get away from anger. Unfortunately this also makes me angry because my default position on astrologers is standing, usually on their throats. And this doesn't do much to disprove the girl in question's theory.

We waz rong.

I saw the experiment which was Shane Watson batting in the top order for Queensland in Shield cricket. It was not an experiment which would have passed muster at the relevant research ethics committees because it was FUCKING PAINFUL FOR EVERYONE INVOLVED.

Great balls of fire

In truth, though, the biggest problem is that Gen Y are a pack of cunts who needed to be beaten more often when they were growing up.

We'll get him when he comes back in

Point Break was and remains a bucket of absolute slop. Still, it was entertaining. In the same way lighting a brown paper bag full of dog poo, leaving it on someone's doorstep, pressing the doorbell and running like fuck is entertaining.

Strange Brew II: The Revenge

Home brew. Beloved by pottering retirees and cheap-arsed uni students alike, it's renown for being almost always horrendous, overgassed and overskanked, its nastiness in direct proportion to the perceived qualities imparted by the description provided by the brewer. So just like VB then.

Even flow

One hopes that John the Dodgy Indian Bookie is content with the result of the final one-dayer between the Poms and the Aussies, as he would be with the Manc derby, in which the ref played seven minutes of the four minutes of injury time scheduled. Coincidentally Man U scored the winner 6m58 into injury time. Choads.

The unbearable lightness of crap

The issue of whether 31 year old men should be wearing skate shoes in the first place is not one which we will be addressing in this context, so go intercourse yerselves with some form of objet d'art, preferably a pointy one.

Alarms, sirens, fire trucks, car crashes, drizzle... a typical Wednesday afternoon on the mean streets of D-town

As it turned out, the giving-way-to-nobody specialist at the wheel of the Vectra had been a middle-aged Chinese lady test-driving her car after having been repaired after the LAST rear-ender she'd been in. Hmmm.

Stitch that Jimmy

Custard are reforming. And you thought it was just if you left the stuff in the fridge long enough the skin would self-aggregate into a conscious lifeform.

The real Grand Final

Bathurst is a race of endurance, and per the oldest maxim of motorsport, to finish first, first you must finish. Hence the winner is anyone who survives all of that and still makes it to work on Monday. Without calling in sick, claiming the chicken salt on the pub chips gave you campylobacter. Even though I maintain that WAS a stroke of genius at the time.

Believe it or yacht

Sure, there was a lot that was dodgy about that America's Cup win. Even setting the Silver Bodgie's jacket aside, if it's possible to do that without BBQ tongs.

The WoB Educational Supplement

There is reserved a special kind of hell for those tiny-penised arseclowns who immediately greet the arrival of an overtaking lane by adjusting their velocity from ten km/h below the posted limit to ten above. It's called Christchurch, and they're fucking welcome to it.

Movember reign

Given my dubious history with facial hair you'd think I'd be the least appropriate signup for a front-running premiership-chasing Movember franchise, but the Magnum PI All Stars (captained by fine citizen Naut) appear to think otherwise. And they've already got Major Havock's dubious ginger mo in the train-on squad so what's another dose of dodgy ranga facial fuzz between mates.

Whatareya?

I'm so fucken rural I feel ripped off when TV ad breaks don't contain at least one commercial for cattle dip. Fairly content in D-Town then, as it happens.

Position A, Sandy

There's weird doings afoot on my televisual screen, and it's not just the glass of Cooper's Sparky I'm viewing it through. It's that there golfing tournament, the Strayan Masters, in which it is oft said, usually by nasal one-armed golfing drunk Jack Newton, 'The Tradition Continues'. Except, in this year's Masters, the tradition does not continue. It fails to continue. It is, indeed, discontinuous. And there's nothing more profoundly objectionable than discontinuities in one's tradition.

One shot for glory

I'm backing the All Whites because we Aussies know what last-chance, sudden-death World Cup qualifiers are like. They're horrendous. They're miserable and desperate and they fucking kill you to watch them. They suck. And we kinda miss them.

Not very PC

But there's that certain whiff to Linuxistas, that whiff of... I don't know what you'd call it. Anorak. Parents' basement. Lynx Africa. Really, they're just as dull and punishing as the PCites, just with that alluring dash of proto-anarchic 'I'm bringing down the system from within, really quietly, so like totally up yours Uncle Bill' which pulls all the chicks. For sufficiently low levels of all.

No silver lining

Eastern Creek Raceway was built for two reasons: one, to steal the MotoGP off Phillip Island, and two, to replace Amaroo Park, a wonderful little racetrack once described by Nelson Piquet (Senior, the old man of the crashing-F1s-on-purpose muppet) as a mini-Nurburgring but which was put to the sword in the late 90s by the need to build more obnoxious fucking McMansions on prime bushland.

Random fragments

Te Reo Maori is the official second language of New Zealand. You can answer questions in University exams in it if you want. Personally I have to admit to being cynical about the practical utility of a language developed by a seafaring island warrior people for modern, technologically confronting Western life.

I now stand corrected. Te Reo Maori's fucken tops.

Dirty tramps get sprung

Kids these days might get iPods and designer smack but they also have to put up with milquetoast bullshit the likes of which had never even been heard of ten years ago. Time out. Naughty steps. Peanut allergies.

Ten years gone

With the signature half-arsedness that characterized our year, noone could be bothered organizing our ten year high school reunion. There was, I'm told, an eleven year reunion, basically organized by and for the girls who'd hung around and bred with locals (cue Tex Perkins and the Dark Horses' 'You'll Do'). Organization went as far as putting an ad in the local paper. World of Bollocks' Rural Correspondent AJ got an invite. I'm led to believe not even he could be arsed with it.

All my friends are getting iPhones

iPenises for all. They're fucking BRILLIANT. They're shiny, they do stuff, they work well, they play music, have lots of cool apps and, in a novel development, you can talk in one end and people will talk back to you at the other. WTF next people?? Web 2.0 FTW!!!1!
[Additional: you can only surf iPorn on the iPhone. All play-toys used by the shaved amateur Hungarian lesbifriends in question are shiny, designer-trendy with rounded edges, and the batteries give out just when least desired.]

While my architect gently weeps

SAAB are no more. That sound you can hear is every architect, dentist and marketing 'creative' you know (and I do hope you know very few) sobbing into their short blacks.

Ain't got no body

There hasn't been a good low carb beer brewed anywhere, ever. And there never will be, because it's like trying to make fat-free chocolate, or friction-free sex. You can't take out the key ingredient and expect to make the thing appealing.

Corporate whore of the week

Marcos Ambrose is still a fucking embarrassment to his nation. Thankfully his nation is Tasmania and we can disclaim all responsibility for the little floater.

No fidelity

Nothing about the '80s was worth keeping, retaining, or revisiting. Not the fashions, not the movies, not the cars, and definitely not the music. It. Was. Shit. I know. Unlike most of these tweenie fucks who are buying the stuff, I Was There.

Monster Garage

Some people read Playboy for the articles. (Liars.) I watch Discovery Channel for the muscle car shows. Anything that involves ripping open an old-and-sagging '70s highway hero, gouging out the crap and broken bits and stuffing it full of race-engineered WIN is my kind of infotainment-oriented reality TV experience.

Youse all sound the same to me, ay

For reasons that escape me the NZ accent perennially wins awards for being the most 'pure' version of spoken English in the world. It's certainly been purified free of vowels. At last count they had one and a half.

Help the aged

The JJJ Hottest 100 has always been less a barometer of alternative musical credence and popularity and more a fucking good giggle. Any music poll which features in its archives Number Ones of the calibre of 'Pretty Fly For A White Guy', 'Asshole' and 'That Song Fat Arse Lloydie Did For That Ford Territory Commercial' has all the credibility of Tony Abbott at a 'Girls Can Do Anything' campaign launch.

The rant we had to have

Let's do a thought experiment. (On second thoughts let's find a social scientist and punch them in the teeth for being part of the group of nimrods and fucktards that came up with the term 'thought experiment'.)

Men behaving badly, part one

Five thirty-something men in a beat-up AU wagon for two days. Ambitious? Yes. Inadvisable? Probably. Immature? Well DUHHH. And fun? As sure as Jack Newton swims in circles…

Take another little pizza my heart

New post at Mother Foccacia: there is no place for American-style pizza in modern Australian cuisine, aside from out the back in the skip.

Animal husbandry

A furry, it seems, is an individual, presumably of sound mind, who chooses to dress up in fake animal costumes in order to... erm... meet similar like-minded individuals in similar animal suits with similar suspiciously-placed velcro zips. See, you knew those Wilderness Society Koala dudes were weird fuckers. Literally, as it turns out.

Men behaving badly, part two

Uncle Teds – Tooheys Extra Drys to their mother - were our traditional beverage whilst Out And About On The Piss in the late Nineties and early Noughties. One of Greg and my flatwarming pissups in St Lucia years back had been titled The Denver Beanland Memorial Housewarming, With Special Guests ‘The Uncle Ted Experience’.

On the Gear

The problem with Top Gear Australia, simply, was the presenters. Steve Pizzati is a tremendous driver and a nice bloke but is dressed by his mother, who is blind, and sounds like a jockey with a peg on his nose. Warren Smith is a News Ltd cartoonist with stupid facial hair, and Charlie Cox is nominative determinism.

Crimes of passion

Passion Pop tasting notes: a full frontal sensory assault of sulphites, cough medicine and acid-etching fizz, with a lingering soupcon of arse on the back palate. Tasted like Passiona that Oliver Reed had done wees in after a particularly hefty between-gigs session at the Goat & Dirigible. Had a kick on it though, like a mule with Tabasco on its gronnicks. The hangover arrived slightly before the second sip.

Beyond Solvation

Still, a fridge full of Sol for Tasman Bitter money ain't such a bad arrangement. Particularly when the most significant issue you have to account for becomes where the fuck do you find a stubbie holder that'll fit a fucking ludicrously oversized novelty bottle of beer. Darwin might be a good place to look.

Men behaving badly, part three

I'd missed KFC. Good KFC, I meant. Australian KFC. KFC that tasted good and didn't give you food poisoning. Whatever the fuck NZ farmers were doing with their fresh chicken, they needed to stop it, or do it more hygienically.

Cletus, get off Sharlene (cue banjo music)

Sharlene Slunt is a studious, book-loving high school senior whose safe world is turned upside down when she's drawn to the hero of our story, Cletus McBitey, an immortal vampire whose dangerous 'unlife' is both frightening and fascinating. Their friends Southern Comfort and Rohypnol advise and support this starcrossed pair as they begin a turbulent relationship...

Pictorial tribute

I've only been gone a day, and already there's memorial pictures of me plastered on every doorway. By this time next week they'll have put up a statue like King Wally at Suncorp.

Pop will f**k itself

Homophobia dominates pop music, from George Michael in the 80s to the dude out of Savage Garden who wasn't banging the one out of Hi-5 in the 90s. Not to mention the abuse and vilification post-op transsexual Lady Gaga gets even today from a bigoted and ignorant industry.

Gardening leave

The Gardies: a poo-brown brick blockhouse out of the Legoland school of architecture, with a dilapidated beer garden strewn with broken furniture, more akin to the backyard of one of the neighbouring student flats than a licenced house of ale. But that's the thing. Uni bars aren't meant to be shiny. They're meant to be functional. Like the backyards, living rooms and garages of the student flats they stand as proxies for.

______________

Enough recycled shite; Actual New Content coming soon. Honest.

Till then... the Doctor is OUT.

The Weak in Tunes

A lot of ill-informed, opinionated, reactionary crap has been written over the years in the guise of music journalism. This is some of it.

NOEL! WHERE'S ME FRUIT PLATTER!
Noel Gallagher is in his late thirties, seemingly still gets his hair cut by his mum with a pudding bowl and tin snips, and plays in a Beatles tribute band called Oasis. Yes, they're still not dead yet. He's been known to be good for a quote on the odd occasion. Usually, though, he just talks bollocks. As was the case recently when he decided to voice his opinion ref. the Strayan Nayshun's latest squadron of canary yellow heroes (except their playing strip is more of a urinary tract infection gold), the Socceroos. Here's the link courtesy SMH.com.au which we will now, in accordance with company policy, blatantly rip off:

Oasis frontman Noel Gallagher has let rip at the Socceroos, saying Australians should stick to sports they're better at. The keen soccer fan saw the Socceroos play at the World Cup in Germany this year and says he wasn't impressed. Gallagher, renowned for his controversial outbursts, said he did not have a great deal of respect for Australians playing soccer. "Stick to the Aussie Rules and the tennis and the cricket and the rugby, you are good at that," he told AAP from the United Kingdom. "Football is the game of the intelligentsia and you are shit at it. You will never win anything so give it up."

On that basis, why have England botherered fielding a team anytime in the last 40 years? Or, come to think of it, why the fuck are YOU interested in football, Gallagher?

The 39-year-old is a keen follower of his hometown club Manchester City and was the unofficial mascot of Italian World Cup striker Alessandro Del Piero.

Is that why he's now so shit?

It was the Italians that dumped the Socceroos out of the World Cup under controversial circumstances, thanks to a hotly disputed last-minute penalty.

Meaning they were beaten by the eventual champions. Meanwhile, Engerland staggered asthmatically past Ecuador, only to lose to the Portuguese diving team. Who went on to be the worst side in the last four by some distance.

"What do they call them, the Socceroos? Do me a f---ing favour, you could come up with a better nickname than that."

OK, fair point.

Gallagher says he has a particular dislike for Socceroos midfielder Tim Cahill, who plays for Liverpool club Everton. "I don't know, there is something about him. I would love to kick him right in the bollocks." Cahill scored two goals for the Socceroos in the World Cup match against Japan and was widely considered one of the country's best players of the tournament. "He has just got one of those faces," said Gallagher, whose brother Liam is also in Oasis. "Don't you find his face really slapable? I can assure you, lots of people in England do."

Noel old son, next time you feel a hankering to slap a Samoan gentleman in the face, might we suggest a night out in South Auckland.

Oasis toured Australia last December and next month release a "best of" album, titled Stop the Clocks. The album features a selection of what Gallagher considers the band's best work, including tracks such as Wonderwall and Morning Glory.

...i.e. the stuff he wrote fuckin' years ago when he was working for the fuckin' Gas Board, as distinct from anything the mouthy Mancker has extruded since. Noel Gallagher hasn't written a decent song in the last ten years. It's well known that before Oasis released their first album, he was sitting on about a hundred songs which he'd written. All the best stuff, the cream of the crop, went on Definitely Maybe. The next best stuff went on What's The Story With My Morning Glory, and the leftover shite went onto whatever the fuck their shitbox third album was called. Then he actually had to try and write some new stuff, which was also shite. That just about brings us up to today, where he's resorting to slagging off Samoan kids in order to try and get someone, ANYONE, to buy his hastily scraped together compilation made up of half of Possibly Vaguely and bits of his Morning Glory.

Despite his outburst, Gallagher said he liked visiting Australia and that he was "gagging" to get over for the Ashes cricket series. "The last time was just brilliant so the sooner the better for me," he said.

Yeah, Noel, us too. My old man, he told me, England will not bat till tea. With a nick-nack paddy-whack give-Patsy-Kensit-a-bone, pasty Pommies FUCK OFF HOME.

Meanwhile, Manchester City, as of press time, have won just one away game since last December, and in last weekend's round of games, managed to lose four-nil to Wigan Athletic.

I think there's something in that for all of us. There certainly was for Wigan Athletic.


HORSE DE COMBAT
This year's Melbourne Cup took on a J-Pop feel with the result at the end of 3200 metres a musical 1-2 for Japan, with Nippon nag Delta Blues edging out stablemate Pop Rock. Owners and connections of pre-race favourite Efficient apparently paid $153,000 to get their horsey a late start in yesterday's Big One; not that Efficient at all, particularly when the conveyance pulled up lamer than the Ronnie Johns Half Hour on race morning and had to be scratched. Short priced favourite on the NSW tote at race start, Metropolitan/Caulfield Cup double-winner and well-known typographical error Tawqeet, responded to the favouritism by rarking up in the gates, then 'running' like he'd been fed on a diet of Rohypnol, cement, and Phillip Ruddock's speeches. Some on course found the musical overtones of the Japanese quinella somewhat ironic given that Japanese music is utterly, utterly shit; however, more controversially, it appears that the result of this year's Cup has actually been foreshadowed in every album released by John Spencer's Blues Explosion (as made famous by the D4's Blues Explosion Drinking Game*) in the past ten years. In an exclusive post-race interview, Spencer declared "The BLUES is STILL NUMBER ONE!" and staggered off to find some Colombian go-fast. If not some Horse. Ahem.

Left: John Spencer
(not to be confused with Don Spencer who sang 'Bob the Kelpie')

* How to play the Blues Explosion Drinking Game:
1. Go to one of their gigs.
2. Every time John Spencer randomly bellows "BLOOOOOZE EXPLOSION!!!", drink.
3. Fall over.


WHAT A FRIEND WE HAVE IN CHEESES
The Britpop civil war of the '90s has finally reached armistice. Peace has been declared. Where once pitched battles raged across the stages and the pages of the British music industry, there is now rapproachment between the two warring tribes of Britpop, between those who follow the Mancunian Brothers Gallagher and those who set their star by that floppy haired tweek who went on to sing for Gorillaz. Oasis versus Blur, people. Get with the program.

Anyway, as some old dead fucker from Liverpool once wrote, war is over. And the peacemaker? Not a fairly shit action flick with George Clooney and a dubiously un-ginga Nicole Kidman (why did the last 10 minutes on the big nuke timer go for twenty on-screen?) but... cheese.

Our story begins with former Blur bass player Alex James who has packed in the London celebrity gig and fucked off to the sticks. He lives in a house (a very big house) in the country, doesn't drink smoke laugh takes herbal baths in the country... Sorry. Anyway he's got a farm in the Cotswolds and makes cheese. Not dick cheese either, the proper stuff.

And it seems, if Sources Close To The Band (i.e. some cunt from the NME who made this shit up) are accurate, cheese was the glue that held Blur together for so long. "Cheese was the glue that held Blur together so long," A Friend was quoted as saying. "Damon (Albarn, aforementioned tweek) and Alex (James) have always been enthusiastic about cheese. But it wasn't until recently that Alex discovered Liam (Gallagher) and Noel (Where's me fruit platteh) shared their obsession." Who this Friend Of The Band is, other than a tedious name-dropping arsetard, remains a mystery, but pretty safe to say it's not Graham (Coxon), former guitarist for Blur, who is still of the opinion that Damon (Albarn) and Alex (James) are a pair of (fuck)tards. Oasis, for their part, are no strangers to producing their own cheese (insert Be Here Now joke here, pause for editing.)

Anyway Farmer James has invited Albarn and the Gallaghers up to his cheese factory to jointly develop a special edition cheese for the upcoming BRIT awards. James, whose life has "transitioned completely from hard drugs to soft cheese," has remarked, "It's amazing, the friends you can make, just through cheese. People get very emotional about it!"

Maybe not a complete transition away from the 'hard drugs' side of the ledger then methinks? Someone tell him to stop mainlining the Gruyere.

YOUR MOTHER'S ON THE TOP OF MY 'THINGS TO DO' LIST
Anyone who saw, heard or even heard of Wolfmother's shambolic, discordant performance at Splendour In The Arse 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.


KNIGHTS PUNT JOHNS
Buggering up an otherwise fairly tops weekend for the one-time steel capital of Newcastle (go the Jets), the city's third-favourite Johns boy, freelance ponce and Heath Ledger impersonator Daniel, and his former kiddie band Silverchair were summarily given the arse by pommie Pink Floyd channellers Muse in the battle of the Almighty Hunnert on Straya Day, with the latter's stupendously overblown Knights of Cydonia outpointing the Chair's Straight Lines by some 13 votes, the democratic equivalent of a pubic hair. Which appears to be what young Danny is sporting on his face at present, in the form of the most-glued-on-looking goatee in Christendom, in 'landing strip' style of course. Presumably Ms Imbruglia ditched him because he kept scouring the bottom of the shower recess for fresh ammo for the Advanced Hair people after she'd been in for her daily ablutions. Or maybe it's because even after ten years in the spotlight he still looks like a snotty-nosed tween brat from Newy's bogan west (or north, south or east for that matter), as likely to be able to grow his own facial hair as to be able to write a decent rock song.


ALBUM REVIEWS IN BRIEF
John Butler Trio, Grand National
It's a John Butler Trio album. What the fuck do you expect it to sound like? Def Leppard?

Lost Prophets, Liberation Transmission
Snotty emo kids trying to do '80s hair metal, and failing appallingly. Fucking woeful. Don't. Just don't.

The Dandy Warhols, Odditorium or Warlords of Mars
The Verve are a pack of lying bastards. The drugs do work. And judging by this incoherent lot of flotsam, they work bloody well thanks very much.

The Datsuns, Headstunts
Like most old Datsuns, dependable and reliable but gradually becoming more crap with age.

Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
Yeah... it's a'ight... can't really see what all the fuss is about though.


FORGET THE LYRICS
While it may be true that, 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 else 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 as 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.


MUSIC NEWS UPDATE: ALL THE NEWS THAT'S PRINTED TO BE FIT, INNIT
(with special correspondent Mike Skinner from the Streets, apparently)

• Powderfinger guitarist Ian Haug is suing Jupiters Casino, claiming their hired goons roughed him up in 2006 when he was celebrating a birthday at the neon-stained pit of human suffering that deserves one day to sink into an unholy vortex of pitiless evil in proportion to itself. The Fingerist, whose members have had a long history of kicking off and creating havoc when out on the turps, claims his wrists were “bent, twisted and restrained with significant pressure and excessive force” and that because of the incident, his playing technique has been forced to change. Which may explain why their last album was so desperately fucking ordinary.
  

• China have told Oasis to fuck off, labelling the act 'unsuitable'. Ostensibly this is the result of the band playing a Tibetan freedom gig 12 years ago, but the fact that both Gallagher brothers are gobby twunts (particularly Noel) of no discernable talent (particularly Liam) who haven't released a decent album since Definitely Maybe/Morning Glory (an argument in itself) possibly informed the Central Committee's thinking on the issue.
  
  
• Les Paul passes away aged 94; to be buried in sunburst maple coffin with trapezoidal pickups.
  
  
  What, too soon?
  

• Bono says Chris Martin from Coldplay is a wanker. Jesus, where do we start with that one, we could be here for days. A sanctimonious self-aggrandizing cock sledging a marshmallow-soft arriviste ponce - neither of which Your Correspondent would piss on if they were on fire - for the International Pot-Kettle Heavyweight Championship.
  You know what, fuck it, write your own material for that one.

• Maroon 5 have a new album out.
  Music has officially ended. Everybody get the hell out.

The Doctor is getting the hell OUT.