Mister Minit's a munting muppet

My political beliefs - which probably belong in this blog about as much as nude photos of Madeleine Albright, but we'll run with it - are what I've described in other media commitments as 'pragmatic left'. That is, I back small-L-liberal causes, but I'm aware of the flaws behind the mechanism of implementation - for instance the fact that any state or federal Australian Labor government should never be allowed to stay in power more than three terms lest they atrophy into a lazy, reactionary pack of tossers tending cynical-right-wing on any political question of merit. The problem with any political system or framework is usually that humans are involved. Humans are vain, jealous, venal and egotistical, and political humans more than most.

So, yeah. Occasionally, you're going to have to wear a conservative government. Such as we have now in NZ under PM John Key's Nationals. It could be worse. It's a conservative government hamstrung in its conservativeness by only being in power through a very uneasy alliance with the usually-leftist Maori Party - a party many members of the NZ Nats would like to see disenfranchised by the abolition of the Maori electoral seats in parliament, but that's another story - and as a result, to paraphrase a Don Chipp-ism, the bastards are kept more or less honest. The Keymaster is far from the worst conservative leader you could imagine. That'd be some kind of horrific melange of Abbott, Howard and Dubya, I suspect. Mr Minit has spent about 15 minutes in politics, having made a metric shitstack of coin as a merchant banker for Merrill Lynch and belatedly decided to go into politics having safely accrued his first couple of million. He doesn't seem to want to kill and eat babies of single mothers on welfare in the same way your usual common-or-garden-variety NZ Nats leader would. Given that the last guy did a deal with the Exclusive Brethren for support, anything's an improvement.

Mr Minit's biggest problem - aside from the rest of the NZ Nats still being the same rabble of arse-backward bigots, inbred Cletuses and born-to-rule fucking imbeciles they ever were - is that not being a politician by training means he's desperately shit at the one thing career politicians make their living at, the impromptu, off-message, off-the-cuff soundbite. The Beehive press gallery know the drill by now: Stick mike under Mr Minit's nose, ask off-topic question, watch the bastard flounder and mumble like a beached dugong with a harpoon up its jacksie. Helen Clark used to be a monster at this - she'd dominate the room. (The off-topic soundbite stuff, not the harpoon thing.) Whereas the Keymaster just redefines crap.

One can only offer this apparently inherent inability to provide intelligent (or even intelligible) content on cue as some kind of weak explanation for what the fuck he's doing apparently giving the country's full backing to Egyptian dictator Mubarak over the weekend - buried, in true NZ media fashion, at the end of this piece about how a former All Black was in somewhat mild danger of splitting a nail while poo and Mistral were first interfacing in Cairo.

"New Zealand wants a peaceful outcome to this, in the end whoever governs your country is a matter for the citizens. In the case of Mubarak, he's been there for a very long time -- 30-odd years I think -- we respect the fact that he has done his very best to lead a country which has recognised Israel and therefore wanted to make sure the position in the Middle-East has been a peaceful one."

Riiiight. We'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume these thoughts reached outside air before Mubarak's goons started shooting old ladies in the face. Though with the religious profile of Key's electorate - and of Key himself, for that matter - in mind, it's interesting that 'recognising Israel' seems further up Mr Minit's Big List Of Stuff Egyptian Leaders Should Do than 'not killing your own citizens.'

The Doctor is OUT before Mr Minit sets his SIS Secret Police onto him. The arsehats who took five years to realise they'd hired Walter Mitty as their chief scientific advisor. But that's another (other) story...

Caller, you're on the air

I moved to NZ to get the hell AWAY from AFL football, which in some eyes would disqualify me from holding an opinion on the removal-from-duty of AFL commentator Kelli Underwood. But of the games and highlights I've seen in the years hence (and no, there was no escape to be had, it appears), Kelli Underwood's AFL calling was actually pretty ordinary. As a play-by-play caller - remembering the players names and positions - she knew the game enough for the job. But, and there's no underestimating the importance of this for someone who is known almost entirely by the sound of their voice - her voice was desperately fucking annoying. The particularly desperately fucking annoying part - which may well have been her producers' idea at Channel 10 - was that she bellowed forth with some sort of constipated Rabs-Warren-Lite roar whenever anything 'exciting' happened, if it can be said anything 'exciting' ever actually happens in AFL football. As though she'd been told, or had decided for herself, that the only way to be taken seriously as an AFL caller was to grunt and groan like an old wharf. Or Dennis Cometti.

So, as with a lot of people who aren't particularly good at their jobs, Kelli got fired. I don't have a problem with that. I would have fired her for spelling her name with an 'i' like a particularly boganlicious extra from Kath and Kim, with accent to match. I wouldn't have hired someone with a desperately fucking annoying voice to call AFL games any more than I would have employed Bobcat Goldthwait to do voiceovers for funeral home ads on TV. However, as a result of holding this view, clearly I'm a bogan sexist fuckwit and should be compulsorily sterilized, if the sneerings of something calling itself a Penbo on Rupert's shit version of Crikey are to be believed. Clearly, anyone who supports the firing of Underwood may as well be joining Matty Johns and the Cronulla Sharks in a pre-season 'bun', you misogynist prick. There must be some sort of gender-political version of Godwin's Law at work here. Surely as soon as you claim the entire other side are sexists, you lose the argument, yeah?

Nah. And so the impossibility of even discussing Underwood's competence in a rational manner becomes apparent. You can't simply say they were crap, as was pointed out about BBC Formula 1 caller Jonathan Legard before he was given the arse in favour of having two colour guys and no actual commentator - an experiment in breaking down stereotypical sports-broadcast roles as daring in its own way as having a female caller in an AFL game. And that, really, is the issue. Underwood's hiring, wrongly or more wrongly, was seen as some great watershed for gender politics, rather than a curiosity at best and marketing-led dubiousness on Ten's part at worst. Quite why there actually is any expectation of gender balance in the media presentation of professional sports that are overwhelmingly dominated by players and coaches of one gender or the other seems strange.

I'm carrying no candle for the way sports are 'traditionally' presented on TV, either. Standard operating procedure appears to be to have some pretty young thing on the sideline, picked for appearance rather than knowledge or ex-player reputation, to giggle and swoon through lines of Captain Obvious questioning while the ex-pros in the booth - overwhelmingly of the other sex - pat them condescendingly on the head after every throw-back-to-the-combox. The most striking example of that sort of tokenism is actually One HD's netball coverage. Quite what the fuck that grinning tool who knows less about the game than I do is doing front-and-centre, other than as eye candy for the target demographic, I have limited concept. Although if anyone can actually tell me which of Fox Sports' fleet of identikit peroxide blondes is which, I may actually be able to make sense of their Big Bash cricket coverage.

This is not, repeat NOT, to say women can't present, commentate or report on men's sport, or vice versa. Far from it. There are many brilliant, hugely talented female sportswriters out there. (And then there's Rebecca Wilson.) Some of them played professionally (like Sky NZ's Melodie Robinson, a very sharp rugby analyst who happens to have won more World Cups than any All Black living or dead - not hard since the men ritually choke in the knockout stages every four years), some who didn't. Some are actually very good at that otherwise-token sideline role, demonstrating a knowledge of the game and its nuances which far outstrips the position description - Mel McLaughlin of Fox Sports' A-League coverage comes to mind. It's the tokenism of that role which grates, no matter the gender balance of the sport in question. It wasn't Kelli Underwood's fault she was promoted into a role which she didn't quite have the skillset for; you could call it the Peter Principle in action. But we should be able to have a discussion about that without blinkered arsehats declaring anyone and everyone who disliked her commentary to be a sexist, fascist, rapist or Nazi.

Then again, as my mate AJ just pointed out, while Ian Healy has a paying job at Ch9, NOBODY should be sacked from a commentary gig.

What do you think? I'm Doctor Yobbo, with a Y. *affects comedy leprechaun accent*

The Doctor is OUT.

Pick the fat kid

You could tell just by watching him bat that Phil Hughes didn't want to open for Australia. Maybe he did a bunch of years ago, when he first got the gig and peeled off a couple of dazzling centuries early-on. But not now. Not after being dropped and recalled and dropped and recalled. Not now that the massed ranks of Opposition Quicks have figured out that his technique against the short ball is calypso-interpretive at best and cat-on-a-hot-shithouse-roof at worst. And not now that he's desperately, woefully, arse-reamingly out of form. Look for him down the unattractive end of the 2010/11 Sheffield Shield runscorers list - second-bottom, just above Cameron White (sorry, Bear freaks.) Hughes' four-day record this year: four matches, seven innings, 118 runs at 16.85, top score of 48. In a team that has won five from seven and only lost a match when all the baggy green caps came back to distinguish themselves in state cricket. One suspects that tells you all you need to know about the overriding competence of the NSW players who have been picked in the current Australian side.

Short Phughes got picked to replace the injured Katich on two counts - well, three if you count the fact he's from NSW - his last innings for Australia, which was an 80-off-fuck-all knocking off a win against NZ in March, and the fact that every potential opener in state cricket is shit this year. Seriously. Go through that list of Shield runscorers and find me one who's actually in form. You'll fail. Until you find the fat kid. Mark 'Kegs' Cosgrove. Six matches, ten innings, 510 runs at an average of 56.66, top score 159. Fresh off 100 and 86no for Tasphobia against WA. And the fat kid's an opener. The fat kid should have been OUR opener.

We'll assume the Cosgrove narrative is taken as read - lefty, arsey, former CA-groomed prodigy, cult hero on account of being fat, drunken and usually in trouble. In short, the Australian Jesse Ryder. Everyone loves Kegs Ryder, particularly when he's smashing the oppo rather than smashing his hand in pub toilets at 3am. Cricket may be the last international sport where the fat drunken bastard - he who stands in for the fan on the couch or the hill more presciently than any other - still has an equal shot at heroism as the skinny, buffed, roided up little tweek who's been training for this since he was six. Other than darts, perhaps.


So why pick the fat kid? Form, ability, technique - unlike any of the existing openers he actually has some. The art of opening a test innings appears to be lost, dying or ignored by selectors worldwide - the majority of openers these days are converted lower-order bats (eg Katich, Watson, McCullum) or arsey technique-free slogsmiths (Hughes, Sehwag, McCullum again). Time was when your number three was your best batsman, but your openers were the guys with the most solid technique, primarily in order to see off the new ball. Not sure you'd back the current encumbents to see off a pie and sauce. Whereas I suspect your money would be safe with the fat kid.

And yes the fat kid has had Previous Disciplinary Issues. All those giving a fuck, raise your right arm. Unless I'm in a room full of amputees I'm taking it that you too remember when Previous Disciplinary Issues were the first box to tick on the checklist for permanent Australian selection. Let's not forget the current side has a captain - at least it appears that's what he's there trying to be - whose Previous Disciplinary Issues include getting his head punched in at the Bourbon and Beefsteak after trying to crack onto Carlotta. Allegedly. Somehow browsing too long at the team hotel buffet doesn't seem to be a sackable offence.

But that all gets us to the main reason to pick the fat kid: he's actually likeable. Does this matter? Should it? You tell me. You're paying the wages of the Australian team, the selectors and the board. Without interested parties watching them go around on the box or on the park, and buying the crap their sponsors pedal, this whole professional sports thing falls resolutely on its coight. Cricket Australia's administrators should live in desperate bowel-tremoring fear of the Emperor Has No Clothes moment when all and sundry decide 'Fuck this, I'm more than slightly over watching a bunch of unlikeable overpaid overpampered peroxided Narcissists fuck about failing on my coin for five days while pissing on the nationally treasured legacies of Bradman, Chappell, Border and Dizzy Gillespie's double ton against Bangers.' Truth be told the last time a team was this hated they were wearing England shirts post-World Cup, after yet another failure to prove 1966 was a desperate fluke, trying to flog their autobiographies (or as Joey Barton put it, 'I played shit, here's my book'.) From both mission-critical perspectives - performance and PR - the Australian team needs a saviour. And, as the cult followings previously attached to the likes of Boonie, Merv and Boof illustrates, it had best be a fat one who likes a beer.

Of course none of this matters. Our next Test series is months away, and it's in Bangladesh. By the time we actually face credible Test opposition - Sri Lanka in August, followed by the Saffers away and the Indians at home - Katich will be back as opener and everyone will have forgotten our pitiful capitulation as an Ashes-contending Test playing nation, on account of having just suffered through our pitiful capitulation as ODI World Cup holders. The touring side for Bangers will have the same array of busted-arse, over-publicised, inked-up, interpretive-haired embarrassments as per programme for much of the Ashes series. Cricket Australia's selectors - at least it appears that's what they're there trying to be - will be safe in the assumption that by the time the creams are dragged out of the back of the wardrobe again, the viewing public will have neatly forgotten just how horribly fucking shit the current side are at playing Test cricket against even modestly competent opposition, much as Gerry Harvey is undoubtedly expecting his cretinous superstores to be once again chock-full of bogans with memories like goldfish ref. his recent online shopping GST bollocks, clamoring to apply for credit they can't afford to buy big-screen shit they don't need and could get cheaper via the Magical Inter-Google.

Bollocks to that. Pick the fat kid. And anyone else who's in form, rather than anyone else who fits the form set by the PR template.

The Doctor is OUT.

Happy Two Day Hangover Day

The day after New Years Day is a public holiday in NZ, which is a nice touch. It's sort of a tacit understanding that the workforce needs a good two days to get over a big night on the turps, particularly the over 30's who are basically the only productive members of the workforce anyway, but that's another entry in our burgeoning file marked 'Generation Y Are Shit At Everything.' Courtesy the vagaries of the calendar this year the public holiday for the day after New Years will be on the 4th, straight after the public holiday for New Years itself which will be on the 3rd. Meanwhile NZ's national day (or as near to one as NZ gets) Waitangi Day, which also falls on a weekend, doesn't get a holiday-in-lieu, which is a bucket of arse. Unless you view the day-after-New-Years as a more significant moment in nation building than Waitangi Day, which depends entirely on how much of a Nationals-voting white-bread arsehatted bigot you are.

Anyhoo. You find Your Correspondent using Two Day Hangover Day (as I feel Jan 2 should be properly titled) for the purposes specified on the label, i.e. avoiding direct sunlight and rehydrating like a bastard. Seems disproportionate given that I only had a couple of beers while making dinner. And a few glasses of wine on Twitter. And some vodkas. And some more beers. And some more after that. And some Baileys, for some ungodly fucking reason. And then... possibly some other stuff. My recollection is poor after about 2am. Thankfully my Twutterances remain on record, including such insightful gems as 'Royally c*nted' and 'I'd hang in there for you Qlders, but you could just adopt daylight savings like a fucking civilised state already #justsaying' and a whole bunch of neolithic rock song lyrics as though they were somehow profound. Ah, bless. Needless to say I was far more unwell on Jan 1 than at any stage during my 'highly emetogenic chemotherapy'. Last time I was that poorly was after a night of unfeasible drinking with @babycakesjase and @moff01 in Newtown a few months back, but that's another story.


The story I meant to tell was that of my history with New Years Eves, and how they're usually more miss than hit in terms of decent nights out (or in, for that matter). The last 4-5 years on Planet Parenthood have been the expected write-off, of course, but to be honest it weren't too flash a record beforehand. The mid-to-late-90s usually saw us congregate at a mate's farm to drink around a bonfire and crank the tunes - Triple J up until Mix-Up-o'-clock, then the preferences of whoever was nearest the stereo at the time, up until dawn where it was usually AC/DC Live at bowel-quaking volume. Usually courtesy the famous Dawso, who was usually the only bastard still up other than me at that hour. Our annual tradition was to split a case of beer - Reschs Real the first year, which was my first ever hangover (no fucking surprises there), then Uncle Ted or something in years to follow - which he traditionally monstered two-thirds of.

One of the better New Years I had was 1999/2000, where we followed the Captain up to Brisbane to watch a covers band made up of some mates of his from Lismore play the Plough Inn on Southbank. Good tunes, good mates, river-launched fireworks seemingly exploding at touching distance, managing to avoid being apocalypsed by the Millennium Bug (though $5 Carlton Colds in plastic bottles seemed to be priced from some distant point in the future) and seeing the first sunrise of the new year (if not, technically, the new decade/century/millennium) through a gap in the clouds over Kangaroo Point. Good times. So good, in fact, that a month later I moved to Brisbane, to the same St Lucia sharehouse we'd crashed at for New Years. Like the guy from the old Remington shavers ads, I liked the NYE so much I moved there.

Which doesn't explain why I was in Sydney for the following year's New Years, or why we went and got thoroughly trolleyed on Dec 30th such that we were still quite ruined on the big night, very slowly sipping beers in the VIP area at Dawes Point Reserve under the southern approaches to the Harbour Bridge waiting for the explodey stuff. A friend of a friend had both the tickets and better plans, so we (myself and the King of Seed) scored an up-close to the millennial pyrotechnics free-of-charge. Almost completely wasted on us, as we were ourselves almost completely wasted. Which is kind of the story of NYE for me. Overdoing it on NYE-Eve and limping through the ensuing festivities like an old dog looking for a place to die. Right up to the last one before Planet Parenthood, 2005-06 on the Goldie with Mr and Mrs Moff. Didn't even make it out of the house. Not sure if any of us even made it to midnight. Probably likewise for most of the NYEs which preceded it, given I can't remember the fuckers.

Still there was one fun one. Drunken Irish postdoc from our lab (and his English soon-to-be-fiancee) threw a bash at his apartment on Highgate Hill. Place was packed full of quality peeps, drinks and tunes (though a bit too much Franz Ferdinand for my liking, this being 2004-05), a view of the fireworks from the balcony, and a CityCat back home across the river at 3am - a quality NYE experience. I liked the NYE so much I... moved to New Zealand.

At the risk of inviting the inevitable fail that is posing a question at the end of a blog post - anyone else found that NYE sucks more often than it doesn't?

The Doctor is OUT. For a pie and a Powerade.