Head cases

First, a content warning:

Back in the day, when I were a lad getting into motorsports, drivers and riders had race helmets that were their signature, that were immediately and irrevocably linked to them.

Whether nationally-themed like Senna's Brazilian stripe (ahem), Mansell's Union arrow or Dario Franchitti's saltire-tricolore mashup, or just characteristic visual branding like Mika Hakkinen's three-colours-blue, Mick Doohan's torn stripes, the Andrettis' familial silver-and-red or
Jacques Villeneuve's explosion-in-a-Crayola-factory, a driver or rider's helmet was his trademark, Nigel Tufnel style.

Alas, no more; in this me-first age of self-promotion and disposable integrity, where we have a four-time F1 world champion who changes his helmet more often than his social media avatar. The world is going to hell in a handbasket, and the youth are to blame.

Bar one. That being Dan Ricciardo, Westrayan hero. Who's chosen to rock up at the upcoming F1 Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi - once a Garfield punchline, now apparently somewhere we need to pretend to give a fuck about - sporting this on his head:

Tremendous effort. Almost as much so as the obvious thematic forebear, this fragment of unutterable genius, this azimuth of human achievement by the great Valentino Rossi, Mugello 2008:

While Ricco's attempt could thence be considered spmewhat derivative, credit must be given for facing the gurning buck-toothed caricature not forwards, but backwards, into the eye of the onboard camera. Imagine how much better this footage of Dan duffing up his hapless team number two at Monza would have been with old mate leering at the lens throughout:



So, at least we can say that one member of today's generation of racers gets it.

The rest, unfortunately, are just polishing their helmets.

The Doctor is OUT.

1968: the rebuttal

It's been argued on these pages before that the late 1960s were a better time, a time of great music, awesome muscle cars, and Australian cricketers you didn't want to punch. If, albeit, fucking terrible beer. In the defence of modern times, however, some of the worldviews exhibited by polite society in 1968 are, shall we say, endearingly archaic. Some are lost to progress. Some remain as conservative government policy. And others live on in childrens' books, reprinted in unmodified form since their first edition...

You probably had this book as a five year old. You probably scrawled all over it like my five year old. The amazing thing is, it's EXACTLY AS IT WAS WHEN YOU WERE A KID. And, seemingly, since its first publication in 1968.

Which is a little, erm, Scarry. And here's why:

The broader economic and societal message is, by modern US standards, almost communist...

...while the gender politics are, shall we say, a bit fucken 1968.

Still, while the depictions of indigenous peoples are fairly average, at least they're less offensive than the fucking NFL.

And Sergeant Murphy has clearly never been on deployment with the Ferguson PD, which is a good thing.

However, there's one last panel which confirms, once and for all, that this is a book from, and of, a distant, archaic time in human history:

The Doctor is OUT.

Fricken pod people man

I don't write as much as I want to these days. Twitter's fault, of course. The instant punchline gratification, combined with the endless links to other people's writing which is usually much better than my handcrafted-from-stale-dogturds stylings, kinda takes the air out of my blogging balloon. I should write more. I'm generally happier when I write more, or at least when I'm working on some sort of overarching creative project (eg ITWPT). But lack of time and inspiration conspire, not to mention the fact all this fucken sport and beer ain't gonna consume itself.

Not to mention all the podcasts I listen to. It's hard to write when you're listening to podcasts. So many podcasts. All the Grantland sports stuff, at least until ESPN suspended the proprietor for pointing out correctly that Roger Goodell is a fucking arsetrumpet. (Back tomorrow, supposedly). Men in Blazers. Wil Anderson and his three pods a week, not to mention all the other comedy pods I've picked up from guests on his show - Walking the Room (RIP), the Dollop, Probably Science, Can You Take This Photo Please, Sklarbro Country, half the acts from the LA Podfest. Google that shit and save me a bunch of linking. It's all good.

And of course long time internet buddy and argumentalist @beeso, late of Mother Foccacia, with his foodie podcast Cheeeeeeeeeesy (plus or minus a few e's). Which, as we finally get around to the point of this discussion, I guested on a couple of times while in Oz a few weeks ago.

We met up in the outdoor bar of the Fox (near where I was staying in South Brisbane) for a few pale ales and some food and drink chat:

“@cheeeeesypod: Cheeeeesy Pubcast.02 Subbing in a listener http://t.co/RlTzLuzEcb” Special guest star @dryobbo filling in for @tastetrekker
— beeso (@beeso) October 1, 2014

Then we went a bit rogue and argued about sport over a bottle of Central Otago pinot. As you do

Featuring @dryobbo “@cheeeeesypod: Not Cheeeeesy.01 NBA and penises http://t.co/OOiO0I6Osi”
— beeso (@beeso) October 7, 2014

It was both fun and educational and we figure out a way to do it over Skype, or maybe just if we happen to be in the same country again with a microphone handy, we'll do more.

Consider yourselves warned.

By the way, what I said for Karmichael Hunt and AFL (gone in 60 months) goes fucking double for Jarryd Hayne and NFL. Or half. Whatever. He's got no fucking show.

The Doctor is OUT.