When you first move to a new place, like, say, Hobart, it's important to work out local directions - my walk from North Hobart to Hobart went like this. Down the hill, past the post office, past that really weird shop on the corner no one seemed to be able to make a go of, then past the hotel with the topless waitresses and the gun fights, past Burger King, past Elizabeth College, then past the place that made the worlds biggest pancake parlour, and then, into town. That was the easy bit, the walking in a straight line into town. There were many local customs to work out - avoiding the big black girl who ran the mall, working out the incredible rudeness of the bus drivers and their palpable inability to explain the ticketing system to newcomers, the system by which Hobart shopkeepers let you know you've spent far too long in their shop, how easy it was to get a CD that wasn't in the 40, like a Catatonia one, compared to Burnie at least, and of course, what all the fuss was about Dancing Man. Later, I would learn the mysteries of the homeless lady with the bag full of door knobs who would walk through the town, and then spend nights playing the piano at the casino to a Grade 12 level. However, she was no Dancing Man, and she was not who the populace flocked to. I had to go and see him...and see him dance, I did.
Dancing Man was one of our local characters here in Hobart - to briefly explain, in the middle of Hobart, there were two Sanity music stores. A little one, and a big one, about 50 metres apart. I have a theory that to make up for the smaller stock range, the much, much more attractive girls worked in the small store. Just a theory. No, I didn't understand it either, don't ask me how the economy works. Outside the little one, no matter what music was playing from inside the store, outside, a bearded, apparently homeless man devoid of shirt would dance to the music in the mall. He didn't have a lot of different moves, basically about 6 different steps, and I'd imagine that he'd have been chased out of any kind of formal dancing competition, but that wasn't important. To the uni students were I went to uni, he was an anti hero, a poetic beloved figure. What he represented was far more important than what he did. People said he was "the maestro of alienation", he was listed as a tourist attraction in brochures, and an incredibly hot girl at uni had a T-shirt with him on it. He sort of wandered through life as far I knew, staying at peoples houses as a guest, joining in with bands on stage. Naturally, you got a lot of uni students saying "Gosh, he's SUCH a free spirit!" - any thoughts he was just a nut who liked dancing and dossing at peoples houses were far, far too simplistic...
In fairness, I'm not a particularly free spirit, because I'm Scottish, where difference and weirdness and free spiritedness is punished with a swift slap to the heid. Most of my attempts to be a free spirit, like when I ran away from home, have ended in disaster. I've always been the classic guy in the corner tutting at people acting silly at parties. Or at least, I used to. I think as I become older, I'm starting to get more in touch with my inner free spirit. Mind you, this is entirely because I've discovered alcohol. That said, I'm still never going to be the guy who stands in the middle of the football over without a shirt on or decides to turn up at a fancy dress party with a girl on my back and...well, you know the rest. I'm barely able to talk to people with any interest or enthusiasm these days, never mind wearing a lampshade on my head. However, I do have a really burning ambition left in my life to do a tight ten at a stand up comedy night, but my attempts at being at one with my karmic universe always end up with me just looking like a knob - one time we decided to play statues in the middle of Hobart, and my friends just ended up having a go at me for being a rubbish statue and left me to go do something else. I'm going to make such a great grumpy old man you know...
Dancing Man, well, he died a couple of years ago, I presume there was some kind of impromptu tribute to him outside little Sanity, which became In 2 Music (with much uglier staff), and now, as far as I know, is closed. The lady with the bag of door knobs, she died too, well, she went missing, as far as anyone can tell. The topless barmaids and gunfights are long gone, replaced by grumpy Tim Rogers and poetry evenings at the Republic Bar. Even the big black girl that ran the mall has been moved on by police and the passage of time and possibly a jail sentence or two. There's no local characters anymore, just some gangs apparently ramming a car into Banjos at high speed, and probably some school girls kissing each other while Katy Perry plays in the background, thinking they are ZOMG outrageous. Eventually, even the freer spirited amongst us find responsbility, maturity and the passage of time will weigh us down, no matter how we might fight it for as long as we can. Dancing Man at least held on longer than most, longer than I did, so I guess I can respect that. The world though keeps on spinning, and time is marching on for all of us...
I think he'd have got a good groove on to the PreSets though, no matter how "dated" I might think they are...
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
No, silly, you throw rice away AFTER the wedding
I've got a friend who doesn't even know who the Veronicas are, let alone that one of them is a lesbian and one was engaged to Dean Geyer. Down here in Tasmania, that's par for the course, it's not really somewhere where the hottest bands gather to play or fashion is often discussed, because it's a simple place for simple folks - no wonder Starbucks closed down - and I don't expect anyone to know who Blondfire is, but it'd be nice to discuss some of the finer points of obscure pop with someone. Back to my friend though, what was interesting today was to learn that even with his limited grasp of popular culture, was aware that Stephanie Rice and that other bloke had broken up. If you don't know, Stephanie Rice and whats his name were Australias golden couple of swimming, and had all these endorsement deals based on the fact that they were going out together, were non drug taking and wholesome, and because no one could imagine them having sex (they really seemed like a couple that had to make dates to be naughty and pash on the school fort) - sadly, they've broken up, hence the joke in the title of this post. Which of course needs to be followed up with a ba doom tish, and some "huh...huh" Rodney Dangerfield style shucking and jiving.
Whether you are famous or not, breaking up with someone is always really difficult. I've never had a terrible bad rip your heart out break up myself - I like to think I'm pretty resillient - but I have had some experience of being dumped. It's never ever easy, that little moment of finality when you get back your CDs, or have to hand back your key for instance is a million deaths all at once. Girls are good at breaking up, much better than when I was growing up, because Sex In The City taught them that with their gal pals in tow, they can get exotic revenge and handcuff a guy to the bed and steal all his stuff. I think girls are much better at relationships than guys as well, because it's a crazed commitment - have you heard that Kelly Clarkson song, "will you fight for me, die for me, live and breathe for me", frankly, I'd have out the door on the first one, never mind going and fighting a dragon for her" - to them and their kind. Nikki Websters Facebook is a wonderful example of heightened expectations in a boyfriend - woe betide the future prospects of a boy who crosses our N (well, have you seen Sacha Farber recently?). I remember my first ever time getting dumped - I got a huge speech about my failings as a boyfriend, and what I could do to improve and how my musical tastes could be improved. This speech was delivered under a set of monkey bars, I was 12, and I barely remembered 1/2 the time I had a girlfriend to begin with. Still, for some reason, I still really, really hate her...isn't that really strange? How dare she criticise the KLF...
I think most people just break up because they run out of things to say. I think if you date someone because they are rich, you are waiting for the break up to get 1/2 their stuff. If you date someone because they are hot, chances are they won't be one day. I know I'm not Dr Phil, but every relationship I've been in, and I include friendships in this, has a limited conversation span. There's only so many times I can tell someone I like their bangs or talk to them about my cat Senor Bagpuss - with my friends, I'm sure they know exactly what I'm going to say about Mick Malthouse or Britney Spears before I say it. My Dad recently said I was the worlds most predictable conversationalist, a cheek coming from a Man who once went in a two week sulk because Mum forgot Sunday was "boiled egg day". I think this is why I no longer speak to anyone I went to school with, because we had all used up everything we ever had to say to each other and had to get on with the rest of our lives, and find new people to speak to. When I broke up with the netballer, I'm sure we wished each other well, swapped keys and moved on, but we never spoke to each other again. The interesting thing about this was that she kept my Dannii Minogue Secrets VHS tape, and never returned it, and I'm convinced this was the reason she dumped me - she had got the tape, and now I had no further worth. Maybe Stephanie Rice finally got her copy of the Delinquents and...
Leaving school is the ultimate break up - never mind simply losing one girl, one Stephanie Rice, but the sense of normality and familiarity you have built up and the time you have invested in making sure you are OK and not being bullied (if you are lucky) is all finalised, and there you are, on your own. I remember my Grade 12 barn dance in Burnie, it was a chilly evening, and there I was, sitting on a hay bale with a scotch and coke, mystified and unappareciative of everyones kind wishes and goodbyes. I was too young and stupid to actually realise that this was it, a frightening kick into the lonely void. So of course, maturealy, I spent most of my night wondering why the girl I loved (I don't know if I did love her, or had decided on some self sabotage) was dancing with someone else. I ended up writing her a stupidly immature letter and lost her as a friend. However, this is fine because I had nothing left to say to her. In fact, a year later, she groped me drunkenly and I did nothing at all about it - time had passed. If I saw her now, well, I could be polite, but really, we've broken up haven't we? I'm really suspicious of people who "get back together" or go to high school re-unions. Someone told me of a guy in Latrobe (of paddock in fame) who still wears his school uniform to work, and who enthusiastically is still, whether they like it or not, in touch with everyone he went to school with in Grade 12. And he's 38. It really is better to have loved and lost mate...
If it's not working, it's not working...now, Stephanie, if you aren't doing anything this Friday night...
Whether you are famous or not, breaking up with someone is always really difficult. I've never had a terrible bad rip your heart out break up myself - I like to think I'm pretty resillient - but I have had some experience of being dumped. It's never ever easy, that little moment of finality when you get back your CDs, or have to hand back your key for instance is a million deaths all at once. Girls are good at breaking up, much better than when I was growing up, because Sex In The City taught them that with their gal pals in tow, they can get exotic revenge and handcuff a guy to the bed and steal all his stuff. I think girls are much better at relationships than guys as well, because it's a crazed commitment - have you heard that Kelly Clarkson song, "will you fight for me, die for me, live and breathe for me", frankly, I'd have out the door on the first one, never mind going and fighting a dragon for her" - to them and their kind. Nikki Websters Facebook is a wonderful example of heightened expectations in a boyfriend - woe betide the future prospects of a boy who crosses our N (well, have you seen Sacha Farber recently?). I remember my first ever time getting dumped - I got a huge speech about my failings as a boyfriend, and what I could do to improve and how my musical tastes could be improved. This speech was delivered under a set of monkey bars, I was 12, and I barely remembered 1/2 the time I had a girlfriend to begin with. Still, for some reason, I still really, really hate her...isn't that really strange? How dare she criticise the KLF...
I think most people just break up because they run out of things to say. I think if you date someone because they are rich, you are waiting for the break up to get 1/2 their stuff. If you date someone because they are hot, chances are they won't be one day. I know I'm not Dr Phil, but every relationship I've been in, and I include friendships in this, has a limited conversation span. There's only so many times I can tell someone I like their bangs or talk to them about my cat Senor Bagpuss - with my friends, I'm sure they know exactly what I'm going to say about Mick Malthouse or Britney Spears before I say it. My Dad recently said I was the worlds most predictable conversationalist, a cheek coming from a Man who once went in a two week sulk because Mum forgot Sunday was "boiled egg day". I think this is why I no longer speak to anyone I went to school with, because we had all used up everything we ever had to say to each other and had to get on with the rest of our lives, and find new people to speak to. When I broke up with the netballer, I'm sure we wished each other well, swapped keys and moved on, but we never spoke to each other again. The interesting thing about this was that she kept my Dannii Minogue Secrets VHS tape, and never returned it, and I'm convinced this was the reason she dumped me - she had got the tape, and now I had no further worth. Maybe Stephanie Rice finally got her copy of the Delinquents and...
Leaving school is the ultimate break up - never mind simply losing one girl, one Stephanie Rice, but the sense of normality and familiarity you have built up and the time you have invested in making sure you are OK and not being bullied (if you are lucky) is all finalised, and there you are, on your own. I remember my Grade 12 barn dance in Burnie, it was a chilly evening, and there I was, sitting on a hay bale with a scotch and coke, mystified and unappareciative of everyones kind wishes and goodbyes. I was too young and stupid to actually realise that this was it, a frightening kick into the lonely void. So of course, maturealy, I spent most of my night wondering why the girl I loved (I don't know if I did love her, or had decided on some self sabotage) was dancing with someone else. I ended up writing her a stupidly immature letter and lost her as a friend. However, this is fine because I had nothing left to say to her. In fact, a year later, she groped me drunkenly and I did nothing at all about it - time had passed. If I saw her now, well, I could be polite, but really, we've broken up haven't we? I'm really suspicious of people who "get back together" or go to high school re-unions. Someone told me of a guy in Latrobe (of paddock in fame) who still wears his school uniform to work, and who enthusiastically is still, whether they like it or not, in touch with everyone he went to school with in Grade 12. And he's 38. It really is better to have loved and lost mate...
If it's not working, it's not working...now, Stephanie, if you aren't doing anything this Friday night...
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Coffee closes, T opens
It might take a lot to stun everyone in Hobart on a day that we found out one of the Veronicas is gay, but the impending closure of our Starbucks is causing quite the concern among the inner circle of Hobart. Today of all days, just as the Mercury launched the new section in the local paper, "T", which is apparently going to be like the Confidential section in the Herald Sun, but with less recognisable faces - think less film premieres, more people sipping wine at someones 21st - our social elite getting their own section in the paper is cause for celebration nonetheless. I've been trying to think if, when we lived in Penguin, we counted as local identities. Maybe in some way, but probably not, because my mother wasn't into that sort of thing, but we really could have been. My problem, and the reason I'll never be in "T" is twofold (I was really close to making a T for twofold joke...didn't quite work). Firstly, I'm never sure where the happening events are. No one tells me, and I certainly don't get invited to them. Secondly, I don't do well at pretensious events. I'm not good at dressing up - the boss before the boss we had now, who I hated, like, even more than I hate Brian McFadden, was always trying to better us and he took us for one function to the royal tennis club. It was really horrible, watching gay men play royal tennis, but it was palatable for the free wine and cheese. However, later that night I was royally sick on a mixture of cough medicine, rum and wine. Let me hold the pose, I think I hear the photographers from T coming...
I'd imagine that people who drink coffee end up in T, and I hate coffee. There's an excellent Starbucks in Melbourne, a really good one that does fantastic Ham and Cheese toasted sandwiches, but the one in Hobart I can honestly say I've never been into. This is for a number of reasons - mostly, I'm not a fan of the mall, in case the big black girl who used to run it tries to steal my wallet again. Actually, it's all about location. I'm not comfortable in the location of it, because it's where Red Herring (the surf store) used to be once upon a yonder. Red Herring never made me feel comfortable, because it was the first place I ever really felt old in my life. And that was when I was 19. There was something impossibly youthful about the people who worked there - you know that joke in the Simpsons where the MTV VJ has a watch on that counts down until she turns 21 then she gets fired? Was that the Simpsons? Anyway, I think Red Herring was like that. I was always served by impossibly perky 10 year old surfer dudes, and there's just no way I can convincingly pass myself off as a "dude" in those situations. The whole building had this weird cosmic energy that made it impossible for anyone over the age of fifteen to shop there, and I don't think if I went into Starbucks, even with a copy of No Logo by Naomi Klein under my arm to try and look trendy (do the kids still read that?), I could shake that energy off.
I always fancied being a writer though, and I think I could easily pass my days in a Starbucks style environment - although this would get in the way of my plans to find a local pub, and drink myself to death while calling the barmaids darl all day long. The Starbucks in Hobart, as I said I've never been in, but I hope it was like the ones in Melbourne that sold co-branded CDs by funky African artists or Miles Davis or something. I'm hardly Naomi Klein (this is more publicity than she's had in a while) but I'm always a bit uncomfortable seeing the funkiest, coolest Nigerian trumpet player of the 50s having their work sold in a multi national conglomerate dedicated to shutting down mum and dad coffee shops. Maybe they don't do that in Hobart. I know at the one in Melbourne they sell little coffee satchels so when you get home, you can re-create Starbucks in your own home...actually, that's not a smart idea. I actually found the one in Melbourne, at least at first, to be really achingly trendy. I knew I was in the wrong when the book I chose to read while I was eating my foccacia - that really average book Matt Hardy (not the wrestler) wrote about supporting St Kilda which was basically "Chapter 1, footy cards, remember them!" and son on - was pretty much not in keeping with the left wing vibe, the funky Nigerian trumpet playing, and obviously buying something called "a foccacia". In a Hobart context, it was like reading FHM at the Republic Bar - not a good idea.
So if Starbucks is closing, where will the artists, left wingers and trendies go for coffee - same place as always, the Uni. I haven't been up to the uni since my, er, lapse in study concentration. Anyway, again, I wasn't cut out for coffee shop life at the uni. One day I was wearing my gold liver bird motif Liverpool away top (you know the one, the one John Barnes scored at the Dell in?) when I decided that a hard day of playing E-Fed wrestling on the computer deserved a tasty sandwich. Sadly, I wandered into a circle of social hell, ie, the trendy uni coffee shop. I heard a girl with glasses mutter something really darkly about my top, and the sponsor in particular, Carlsberg, saying that it was wrong to walk around promoting alcohol sales especially if children saw it. I looked around and saw people in berets, Camus discussions, and felt really, really awkward, especially as I had my Liverpool top on and was carrying a copy of Fair Game, the Cindy Crawford movie. Still, I had to strike back just a little bit, so I yelled "John Howard rules!" and ran away, leaving much disgusted muttering, beret throwing and the sound of coffee being spat out, double take style. What can I say - they just weren't my kind of people.
So farewell Hobart Starbucks...maybe you'll come back one day...hope to see you in T...maybe Kasia Z can re-open you...
I'd imagine that people who drink coffee end up in T, and I hate coffee. There's an excellent Starbucks in Melbourne, a really good one that does fantastic Ham and Cheese toasted sandwiches, but the one in Hobart I can honestly say I've never been into. This is for a number of reasons - mostly, I'm not a fan of the mall, in case the big black girl who used to run it tries to steal my wallet again. Actually, it's all about location. I'm not comfortable in the location of it, because it's where Red Herring (the surf store) used to be once upon a yonder. Red Herring never made me feel comfortable, because it was the first place I ever really felt old in my life. And that was when I was 19. There was something impossibly youthful about the people who worked there - you know that joke in the Simpsons where the MTV VJ has a watch on that counts down until she turns 21 then she gets fired? Was that the Simpsons? Anyway, I think Red Herring was like that. I was always served by impossibly perky 10 year old surfer dudes, and there's just no way I can convincingly pass myself off as a "dude" in those situations. The whole building had this weird cosmic energy that made it impossible for anyone over the age of fifteen to shop there, and I don't think if I went into Starbucks, even with a copy of No Logo by Naomi Klein under my arm to try and look trendy (do the kids still read that?), I could shake that energy off.
I always fancied being a writer though, and I think I could easily pass my days in a Starbucks style environment - although this would get in the way of my plans to find a local pub, and drink myself to death while calling the barmaids darl all day long. The Starbucks in Hobart, as I said I've never been in, but I hope it was like the ones in Melbourne that sold co-branded CDs by funky African artists or Miles Davis or something. I'm hardly Naomi Klein (this is more publicity than she's had in a while) but I'm always a bit uncomfortable seeing the funkiest, coolest Nigerian trumpet player of the 50s having their work sold in a multi national conglomerate dedicated to shutting down mum and dad coffee shops. Maybe they don't do that in Hobart. I know at the one in Melbourne they sell little coffee satchels so when you get home, you can re-create Starbucks in your own home...actually, that's not a smart idea. I actually found the one in Melbourne, at least at first, to be really achingly trendy. I knew I was in the wrong when the book I chose to read while I was eating my foccacia - that really average book Matt Hardy (not the wrestler) wrote about supporting St Kilda which was basically "Chapter 1, footy cards, remember them!" and son on - was pretty much not in keeping with the left wing vibe, the funky Nigerian trumpet playing, and obviously buying something called "a foccacia". In a Hobart context, it was like reading FHM at the Republic Bar - not a good idea.
So if Starbucks is closing, where will the artists, left wingers and trendies go for coffee - same place as always, the Uni. I haven't been up to the uni since my, er, lapse in study concentration. Anyway, again, I wasn't cut out for coffee shop life at the uni. One day I was wearing my gold liver bird motif Liverpool away top (you know the one, the one John Barnes scored at the Dell in?) when I decided that a hard day of playing E-Fed wrestling on the computer deserved a tasty sandwich. Sadly, I wandered into a circle of social hell, ie, the trendy uni coffee shop. I heard a girl with glasses mutter something really darkly about my top, and the sponsor in particular, Carlsberg, saying that it was wrong to walk around promoting alcohol sales especially if children saw it. I looked around and saw people in berets, Camus discussions, and felt really, really awkward, especially as I had my Liverpool top on and was carrying a copy of Fair Game, the Cindy Crawford movie. Still, I had to strike back just a little bit, so I yelled "John Howard rules!" and ran away, leaving much disgusted muttering, beret throwing and the sound of coffee being spat out, double take style. What can I say - they just weren't my kind of people.
So farewell Hobart Starbucks...maybe you'll come back one day...hope to see you in T...maybe Kasia Z can re-open you...
Monday, July 28, 2008
The new Anne Maree Cooksley and the fine art of dating footballers
KasiaZ
Originally uploaded by JungsPN
I was really pleased to wake us this morning in a transcendent glow that everyone is waking up to what a terrible coach Mick Malthouse is, that oil is getting cheaper, and most of all, that Anne Maree Cooksleys mantle as Australias premiere model slash actress slash champagne sipper at a premiere is under threat. Somehow, it made it into the newspaper that Chadwick Models star model Kasia Z, exciting, the ex girlfriend of Grant Smillie, has possibly, maybe, if you squint, got off with Lance Franklin, the Hawthorn player. I'm excited by this, as I'm excited we're entering a golden age of AFL Wags, of kiss and tell exposes in the Herald Sun, of players girlfriends ending up hosting travel segments and weather reports, taking the jobs of Jaynie Seal and Monique Wright. What Twigley started, I hope Z can continue - I was upset that the Herald Sun comments section on the story the Miss Z may have snogged Mr F to be disappointing. So many people took the time to say "who cares", but I was disappointed in this attitude. I think the pursuit of minor celebrity, of marrying a footballer or being someone like Jake Wall (TV hopeful) is an important aspiration. In fact, what is a blog, but not a desperate hope for some kind of minor fame - we all want it, don't pretend we don't.
I've mentioned a few times the important role the WAGs of the local football team in Penguin played - namely, at 1/2 time scraping the mud off the teams boots with a Paddle Pop stick. I was always aware growing up if a girl had to choose between average old me with my brains and collection of stickers, and a guy who could play football, I was always going to lose out to guys who could play football. This is accepted in Tasmania, although it is still a shame - I wouldn't mind having a crack at Miss Z, but it's not going to happen, I don't play football. This was made abundantly clear to me on one semi legendary round the pubs rumour/apocryphal story/but it was really true discussion when someone told me there was a game in the South of Tasmania one day where the rickety old manual scoreboard at a ground had the same score on it at 3/4 time as at 1/4 time. This was because one of the local girls had taken a footballer into the scoreboard, paid the attendants to leave, and, well, kept the scoreboard ticking over in another way. I've seen some very ugly footballers with some very ugly personalities, and yet they all date stunners. Oh well, such is life I guess, I think that most of the footballers I knew in Penguin ended up alcoholics or bankrupt or mired in some kind of scandal, almost like Gods payback for being able to pick the towns most beautiful girls. It was almost karmic allignment.
I don't know if there's a male equivalent of a WAG or a group equivalent of the WAGs. It'd obviously be the HABs, but it's not really as punchy. I certainly didn't date, say, the beloved and lovely Kathryn Harby, the worlds best looking netballer, but I did secretly have a relationship with a netballer at the local level for months, albeit, one of the worlds laziest relationships. I went to one function as a handbag, a HABag if you will (I like that) with her, at the casino, that I snuck out of the house to go to. It was something, I think a best and fairest dinner, or an end of season function. What was interesting was that all the netballers got up and danced really vigorously while the males (and lets be honest, the lesbian life partners) who were brought along uncomfortably gathered in the corner - a glimpse into Brownlow medal night, as we picked at our shrimp cocktails and discussed generic bland topics. My girl ended up being the good samaritan and taking some of the girls home, so I stood there, idly biting my nails, and I felt really uncomfortable as the girls talked about their sexual conquests, how much they were going to drink, how much sex they were all going to have in Germany, and the size of their boyfriends, er, manhood. As a study in role reversal, it was a classical night, I really should have taken a pen. I didn't like being a handbag, but I was still in at least some kind of inner circle that was exciting, had cheap drink and delicious prawn cocktail. No wonder girls line up to go the Brownlow...
I think back to that night a lot, it was definitely a really strange night, I ended up standing outside waiting for a cab in the rain like some kind of discarded minor celebrity groupie. I also think back to a night at Crown, when a footballer from Melbourne, and by that I mean the team, not just the city. One of their players, off a big win, was stumbling through the casino clearly on drugs. Our party looked over and saw him stumbling through, trying to spin the chocolate wheel and take chips off peoples tables. Security, genuinely, was awe struck that he was even there, and was letting him do it, until he tried to grab someones wig off their head. At that point, security had to intervene, and they threw him out, into the car park, and no doubt went off to phone their contacts at the Herald Sun with a juicy story. We saw him an hour later, lying in the gutter, barely moving, and we were going to take a photo, and he looked like the single greatest hobo in the entire world. At which point his impossibly angular, impossibly glamourous, impossibly blonde girlfriend in a million dollar dress looked at him, drunk off her head, muttering "some place you got us to sleep tonight fucker" and lay down in the gutter beside him, wrapping herself around him. Nice work, I guess, if you can get it...
Welcome to the world Kasia, yer gonna love it...
Sunday, July 27, 2008
The Lambada with Mint Sauce
Tasmanian nightclubs may be strange, dark and mysterious with odd pick up junctures, incredibly strange dress codes and bouncers that would chase your bitch ass all the way over Salamanca square but you have to respect their commitment to playing Dave Dobbyn all night long. Melbourne nightclubs may have their pumping house music, pretentious velvet rope areas for AFL footballers and the far greater sense of danger from gangsters, but only Tasmania won't let you into a nightclub because of something vaguely AFL related on your T-shirt. Actually, this is probably a little flippant, but Syrup, Isobar etc just aren't exactly the most hip and happening places for someone my age anymore. In fact, the last time I was in Isobar, after I somehow got through the security and the boom gates, I had an acid style flashback that made my head spin, my heart pound and the attractive brunette standing next to me stop chatting me up to take a quick break to spew in the pot plant. Wait, that wasn't my fault, I hope - I thought I was being quite charming, with the accent and all. Anyway, let me pause awkwardly to put on a Lykke Li track on, and I'll continue.
Yes, I had an acid flashback, and there I was, in Isobar, but somehow, mentally back in my school disco, with the cliques, the Bangles playing at the end of the night, the sense of incredible awkwardness I felt standing around girls much hotter than me - the bouncers turned into teachers, there were people offering to sell drugs at ridiculously overmarked prices that were just going to turn out to be either Tic Tacs, laxatives or pieces of chalk. The girl being sick in the pot plant was just an older version of the girl in the corner at the school disco that had just eaten a piece of chalk she thought was an E and had convinced herself she was tripping so much she ended up ill and sick in her handbag. Just when my confusion was at it's highest, when everything seemed to be leading up to me turning up to school on Monday ready to gossip about everyone and what they did, over the PA system came Kate Bush and Utah Saints with something good, and I really felt about 12 years old. Was what I was wearing cool enough? Why did I feel so terrible? How much can one girl possibly vomit? Everything is spinning...
School disco, there I am, sitting in the corner, never been kissed, completely and utterly awkward, no real friends, a slight, desperate hope of being kissed. Expensive clothes on that look way too good for me, maybe one or two friends talking me through the night, messing with me, trying to pretend that I have a chance with a hot girl. Fancy someone else, someone unlikely, but someone awkwardly hot, not quite conventionally beautiful, possibly a little chunky, is it wrong to say chunky, she has hot thighs, can I say that, not sure how to approach it. Wondering why there's bucket seats at a school disco. Girl is selling bits of chalk in a bag, claims they are her fathers stash. Have to turn her down. Start conversation about Italia 90 with the boys, but we're all incredibly awkward. Girls are dancing around in circles. I'm talking about how lame they look, how dancing is lame, maybe feeling like taking a chance on buying the pieces of chalk just in case they might be drugs. Sitting looking sharp in my British Knights shoes, now talking about something else, some band that I read about, hope they are cool. Someone says they are lame, teacher is hovering around the girl selling the chalk, trying to warn her subtly, not sure what's going to happen if she gets caught, hope she's got a back story. Sure the DJ looks familiar, didn't I see him last week? Or was it that time I got tricked into going to the nightclub in bike shorts? That wasn't a funny joke...
Girls are dancing together - room is spinning with awkward hormonal claminess. Room is dark, really dark, not sure why, Prodigy is playing, someone is talking to me about sampled music, someone is saying it's the future. Too tired and awkward to listen, not even sure who's talking - man, woman, teacher? Girl, boy? Not sure, shouldn't have had cider shot in the car, wondering what I was thinking. Person has stopped talking, girls on the dance floor have requested Lambada. Being chatted up by girl who looks like boy, she says everything in a flemmy voice, tells me her friend likes her. Hope friend is better looking than her, then chastise myself for thinking that, for that is really mean. DJ is playing trancey remix of Tainted Love, getting nothing. He's taking himself seriously. Lambada comes on, the forbidden dance. Everyone groans, isn't that so last year? Two girls in the middle of the dance floor and doing the Lambada with each other. Everything stops, American girl on the hay bale across the floor is tripping. Girls doing the Lambada seem to kiss, everything stops, whole school is stunned, talking silently, whispering. No sense that the girls are just being outrageous or mucking around, no, this is serious, it must be talked about, in the schoolyard, or is it work tomorrow? Work, what work? Where am I...stop poking me...
Come to, while later, standing on my own, younger people are milling, talking on Iphones. School disco, it's like Isobar. Yep, just like Isobar, right down to the Lambada being on...I'd get a new pot plant if I was you though...I don't think you can write it off as "nutrients"...
Yes, I had an acid flashback, and there I was, in Isobar, but somehow, mentally back in my school disco, with the cliques, the Bangles playing at the end of the night, the sense of incredible awkwardness I felt standing around girls much hotter than me - the bouncers turned into teachers, there were people offering to sell drugs at ridiculously overmarked prices that were just going to turn out to be either Tic Tacs, laxatives or pieces of chalk. The girl being sick in the pot plant was just an older version of the girl in the corner at the school disco that had just eaten a piece of chalk she thought was an E and had convinced herself she was tripping so much she ended up ill and sick in her handbag. Just when my confusion was at it's highest, when everything seemed to be leading up to me turning up to school on Monday ready to gossip about everyone and what they did, over the PA system came Kate Bush and Utah Saints with something good, and I really felt about 12 years old. Was what I was wearing cool enough? Why did I feel so terrible? How much can one girl possibly vomit? Everything is spinning...
School disco, there I am, sitting in the corner, never been kissed, completely and utterly awkward, no real friends, a slight, desperate hope of being kissed. Expensive clothes on that look way too good for me, maybe one or two friends talking me through the night, messing with me, trying to pretend that I have a chance with a hot girl. Fancy someone else, someone unlikely, but someone awkwardly hot, not quite conventionally beautiful, possibly a little chunky, is it wrong to say chunky, she has hot thighs, can I say that, not sure how to approach it. Wondering why there's bucket seats at a school disco. Girl is selling bits of chalk in a bag, claims they are her fathers stash. Have to turn her down. Start conversation about Italia 90 with the boys, but we're all incredibly awkward. Girls are dancing around in circles. I'm talking about how lame they look, how dancing is lame, maybe feeling like taking a chance on buying the pieces of chalk just in case they might be drugs. Sitting looking sharp in my British Knights shoes, now talking about something else, some band that I read about, hope they are cool. Someone says they are lame, teacher is hovering around the girl selling the chalk, trying to warn her subtly, not sure what's going to happen if she gets caught, hope she's got a back story. Sure the DJ looks familiar, didn't I see him last week? Or was it that time I got tricked into going to the nightclub in bike shorts? That wasn't a funny joke...
Girls are dancing together - room is spinning with awkward hormonal claminess. Room is dark, really dark, not sure why, Prodigy is playing, someone is talking to me about sampled music, someone is saying it's the future. Too tired and awkward to listen, not even sure who's talking - man, woman, teacher? Girl, boy? Not sure, shouldn't have had cider shot in the car, wondering what I was thinking. Person has stopped talking, girls on the dance floor have requested Lambada. Being chatted up by girl who looks like boy, she says everything in a flemmy voice, tells me her friend likes her. Hope friend is better looking than her, then chastise myself for thinking that, for that is really mean. DJ is playing trancey remix of Tainted Love, getting nothing. He's taking himself seriously. Lambada comes on, the forbidden dance. Everyone groans, isn't that so last year? Two girls in the middle of the dance floor and doing the Lambada with each other. Everything stops, American girl on the hay bale across the floor is tripping. Girls doing the Lambada seem to kiss, everything stops, whole school is stunned, talking silently, whispering. No sense that the girls are just being outrageous or mucking around, no, this is serious, it must be talked about, in the schoolyard, or is it work tomorrow? Work, what work? Where am I...stop poking me...
Come to, while later, standing on my own, younger people are milling, talking on Iphones. School disco, it's like Isobar. Yep, just like Isobar, right down to the Lambada being on...I'd get a new pot plant if I was you though...I don't think you can write it off as "nutrients"...
Friday, July 25, 2008
A short story about wrestling
Let me set the scene for you, although it's not much of a scene, because I can't remember the year, possibly 2001. I know that I had absolutely no friends, it was a cold, aimless evening, with nothing much to do except my secret weekend work for Yahoo and probably a pointless Collingwood game in the building years of the Malthouse era. The major problem with Hobart on evenings like this is a sense of paralyzing listlesness, as the cold sweeps into every part of your body, making you want to sleep or lie on the floor dreaming of a better tomorrow. As I wandered the streets for the bus, skipping over the rubbish and the broken dreams littering the city, I saw a sign in the window - big time wrestling at the DEC. I knew there was no way in a million years that it would be the WWF, but it was still American wrestling with old WWF stars like The Barbarian, Mr Perfect and...well, that was about it, but it was still Mr Perfect, it was as big time as it could be in Tassie. And it was at the DEC, so I thought I have to go and see this. I got my tickets nice and early, and when I was in the car park waiting to get in, a man in a black security shirt was telling the crowd when to boo and when to cheer, and I went to have a smoke with a grizzled old man who talked about how he was a wrestler and was hoping a WWF scout would see him and hire him as a manager. I wished him good luck, and went inside, noting a Rick Astley poster on the way in - when did he play the DEC I wondered? And why wasn't I informed?
I think you would know if you read this that I have always loved Leilani Kai, the worlds most beautiful lady wrestler, but in watching her wrestle, I did know a little bit about womens wrestling, so I saw two names on the card having a ladies match and I recognised the American names instantly. As it turned out, when I went in after reading the poster, there was no one there at all, my seats changed to the ringside seats as they rushed outside to give away free tickets to passers by. It was a small crowd at the unlovely, car park like DEC to see the Barbarian spend an entire evening waving to the crowd and not doing any wrestling. The ladies match was something no one seemed interested in at all, although this may just be my bad memory. One lady tried really hard to be the bad girl, one the good girl, but they were getting no response, just silence - pure, awful silence. I felt really bad for them, so I tried to be a one person cheer squad, clapping and booing just as the black shirted security guard wanted. In fact, he gave me a thumbs up, which was nice of him. It was rare for me to actually start making noise, but I thought, to hell with it, I don't have any friends, embarrassment is a moot point at this stage.
Eventually, the match spilled outside the ring, and the lady wrestler who was the bad girl got in my face, having dumped the good girl over the top rope and to the floor. This was all pure theatre as she yelled at me to shut up, and I shouted at her as best I could to keep her eye on the match. It was probably the only reaction the match got and then, in slow motion, she leaned in and slapped me in the face, softly, but hard enough to seem convincing. However, as she did it, she whispered in my ear "Meet me in the car park afterwards" in a strange voice. Naturally, I acted outraged and was theatrically restrained by my security friend. Naturally, it was one of those things that happened that no one remembered 10 minutes later, but I did, it was one of those things that make you think you've been part of the show, but I didn't know why she wanted to meet me in the carpark. To be honest, I took it as a mild threat, part of the show, something like she hoped people would know if I messed with her, I'd be dragged out the back and get my arse kicked. So I didn't think anymore of it - I thought, I was part of the show, great, that's it, and to be honest, I had to leave at intermission anyway, due to a prior engagement. No doubt a lot of people thought she'd scared me off, but I had to go and pick up a dog from a girl from North Hobart, and that's not a euphemism, I really did have to go and pick up a dog...
I took the dog home, and I went back to North Hobart, I went to a pub to have a drink, and afterwards, when I was sitting quietly outside the pub reflecting on just how cold it was and wondering how I would be able to make new friends in this city, when I was tapped on the shoulder. It was the lady wrestler from before, gorgeous in the streetlight, shimmering on her face. "I thought I told you to meet me in the carpark" she said, and then she leaned in and gave me possibly the best kiss I've ever had in my life. It was sensuous, sexy, passionate and deep. I did my best to kiss back, but she was kissing harder than me, I guess I wasn't that hungry. It was a beautiful, life affirming moment, and I'll never forget it. I don't know what caused me to be so lucky, for all the fates to combine in this way, but it melted my cynicism, and gave me hope that whatever was coming, I could deal with it - it was that good, that amazing, that it really changed my life. I'll never, ever forget it...
And you know what, after Collingwoods performance today, remembering that kiss is all that is getting me through the day with a smile on my face...
I think you would know if you read this that I have always loved Leilani Kai, the worlds most beautiful lady wrestler, but in watching her wrestle, I did know a little bit about womens wrestling, so I saw two names on the card having a ladies match and I recognised the American names instantly. As it turned out, when I went in after reading the poster, there was no one there at all, my seats changed to the ringside seats as they rushed outside to give away free tickets to passers by. It was a small crowd at the unlovely, car park like DEC to see the Barbarian spend an entire evening waving to the crowd and not doing any wrestling. The ladies match was something no one seemed interested in at all, although this may just be my bad memory. One lady tried really hard to be the bad girl, one the good girl, but they were getting no response, just silence - pure, awful silence. I felt really bad for them, so I tried to be a one person cheer squad, clapping and booing just as the black shirted security guard wanted. In fact, he gave me a thumbs up, which was nice of him. It was rare for me to actually start making noise, but I thought, to hell with it, I don't have any friends, embarrassment is a moot point at this stage.
Eventually, the match spilled outside the ring, and the lady wrestler who was the bad girl got in my face, having dumped the good girl over the top rope and to the floor. This was all pure theatre as she yelled at me to shut up, and I shouted at her as best I could to keep her eye on the match. It was probably the only reaction the match got and then, in slow motion, she leaned in and slapped me in the face, softly, but hard enough to seem convincing. However, as she did it, she whispered in my ear "Meet me in the car park afterwards" in a strange voice. Naturally, I acted outraged and was theatrically restrained by my security friend. Naturally, it was one of those things that happened that no one remembered 10 minutes later, but I did, it was one of those things that make you think you've been part of the show, but I didn't know why she wanted to meet me in the carpark. To be honest, I took it as a mild threat, part of the show, something like she hoped people would know if I messed with her, I'd be dragged out the back and get my arse kicked. So I didn't think anymore of it - I thought, I was part of the show, great, that's it, and to be honest, I had to leave at intermission anyway, due to a prior engagement. No doubt a lot of people thought she'd scared me off, but I had to go and pick up a dog from a girl from North Hobart, and that's not a euphemism, I really did have to go and pick up a dog...
I took the dog home, and I went back to North Hobart, I went to a pub to have a drink, and afterwards, when I was sitting quietly outside the pub reflecting on just how cold it was and wondering how I would be able to make new friends in this city, when I was tapped on the shoulder. It was the lady wrestler from before, gorgeous in the streetlight, shimmering on her face. "I thought I told you to meet me in the carpark" she said, and then she leaned in and gave me possibly the best kiss I've ever had in my life. It was sensuous, sexy, passionate and deep. I did my best to kiss back, but she was kissing harder than me, I guess I wasn't that hungry. It was a beautiful, life affirming moment, and I'll never forget it. I don't know what caused me to be so lucky, for all the fates to combine in this way, but it melted my cynicism, and gave me hope that whatever was coming, I could deal with it - it was that good, that amazing, that it really changed my life. I'll never, ever forget it...
And you know what, after Collingwoods performance today, remembering that kiss is all that is getting me through the day with a smile on my face...
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Sex with strangers
I felt really good today, for what it was worth. I was skimming down the boulevards of Hobart with $olal and Peder featuring Anne Trolle on the IPOD, and it was fantastic. It wasn't as cold as it normally is, the mountain looked incredible, the way the light was dancing off the water was amazing and I almost (almost) had a good day at work. It's funny how a beautiful day can convince you that things are going well, especially after such a lousy start to the day when I was tired and grumpy. I love Hobart on days like today, it's beautiful and spellbinding, without the annoyance of a vast amount of people pushing past you or trying to steal your seat on the bus. What really made me laugh though was that Ashlee Simpson came on my IPOD at the most beautiful moment of scenery, which is a very strange soundtrack I'll admit, but somehow, oh so right.
Given that I'm now quite an old, unattractive man, I think my days of picking up at nightclubs are over - don't get me wrong, I was hardly Dirk Diggler, but at some point, it's part of human experience to wake up in someones house in the morning, peer over awkwardly and then wonder what the hell happened. If this hasn't happened to you, you have to think you've missed out - although on what, I'm not quite sure, as it's quite a horrible five minutes in your life as you struggle to put together the pieces. Chances are, one of you is a lot hotter than the other one, and there's some silence as you fuss through the morning after etiquette. It's almost always impossible to simply up and run as the door is almost always locked. I wonder what celebrities do, say, Anne Maree Cooksley, or an AFL footballer, if they have an agent or a member of staff to talk the person through who they've just slept with and would they mind awfully not going to the press. I've already spoken about the Brett Lee "incident" here, and I also know most of our state cricket team went on the pull, so to speak, after we won the one day title, so I guess they have experience handling these situations, but even they must get it wrong and sleep with mingers from time to time (and to be honest, some very ugly blokes get stunning girls because they play football, to flip it around - did you see who married Mick Martyn?). I guess these days one night stands seem to feel a little like cyber sex for the younger folks - awkward, unfulfilling, but still a little exciting, no matter how lame you feel afterwards. Still, like I always say, no cyber sex until you buy me cyber dinner first...
What has inspired this thinking today was I saw (when I was walking past listening to Goldfrapp on the IPOD) a guy and a girl clearly on their first date, a lunch meeting for coffee and muffins at the Muffin Break store. Nice choice, safe, clean, everyone likes muffins right? Just bland enough to take the edge off the day. However, even with Monster Love on the IPOD, I could tell exactly what was going on. She was talking awkwardly but confidently, in that girl way, about something generic and safe - say, the axing of Big Brother, the taste of the muffins, or how she'd bought an Iphone. Wait, it is about an Iphone, she's pulled it out of her bag. Anyway, she was talking away quite happily, 1/2 smiling, breaking down the walls between two strangers getting to know each other, you know, all good, enjoying the muffin. Now he, and I don't know if she knew this, was plainly not listening. Not to a word. He was staring at her breasts. It was subtle, but a male can tell. Iphones, fantastic no doubt, but what do you look like naked? It was plain as day, I think even the weird looking girl with the funny eyebrows at Muffin Break seemed to notice. I don't know what happened after that, but he seemed to be preparing to sleep with her, and then leave. This may have been a rash judgement, but she was clearly being set up for a one night stand. If he had to sit through an Iphone lecture, he didn't mind. Hell, if it didn't work out, he got a muffin.
Now, this may have been a completely wrong judgement, based on years of having blokey friends, he might have really loved his Iphone lecture. In fact, thinking back about it, the first time I ended up staying at someones house overnight purely for adult entertainment, the girl was the bloke and I was the girl, so to speak. I've already said in this blog I listen to Hannah Montana, so it's looking good isn't it? Anyway, I was at uni, I was on the Internet in that weird underground lab down the path where that bloke was always pulling himself off (we knew what you were doing) over pictures of fat girls. I was sitting doing work, when this quite lithe, snappily dressed brunette girl with great legs and no hips came into the lab, probably the first girl I'd seen in real life with a tattoo. I was writing an e-mail to my friend with my usual pop culture drivel, when this girl just for no reason at all began singing that song "Sex and Candy" - remember that song? Marcys Playground? What was with indie bands in 1997? Fastball? Harvey Danger? Remember them? Anyway, yes, so she starts singing it really loudly, and it's clearly directed at me that she smelled sex and candy. I was a shy, naive Burnie boy but it was pretty clear to me that I was being hit on really aggressively. But what to do, what to say? This is what I said, verbatim, and if it happens to you, I hope it works for you as well. "Well, we can start with candy" and handed her a square of Dairy Milk. Is that lame? Or is that smooth? Is that smoother than a muffin and an Iphone?
Either way, she was treated to a wonderful seven minutes later that night and a bowl of Nutri Grain in the morning. Ah, self deprecation, how to end any blog post I find...
Given that I'm now quite an old, unattractive man, I think my days of picking up at nightclubs are over - don't get me wrong, I was hardly Dirk Diggler, but at some point, it's part of human experience to wake up in someones house in the morning, peer over awkwardly and then wonder what the hell happened. If this hasn't happened to you, you have to think you've missed out - although on what, I'm not quite sure, as it's quite a horrible five minutes in your life as you struggle to put together the pieces. Chances are, one of you is a lot hotter than the other one, and there's some silence as you fuss through the morning after etiquette. It's almost always impossible to simply up and run as the door is almost always locked. I wonder what celebrities do, say, Anne Maree Cooksley, or an AFL footballer, if they have an agent or a member of staff to talk the person through who they've just slept with and would they mind awfully not going to the press. I've already spoken about the Brett Lee "incident" here, and I also know most of our state cricket team went on the pull, so to speak, after we won the one day title, so I guess they have experience handling these situations, but even they must get it wrong and sleep with mingers from time to time (and to be honest, some very ugly blokes get stunning girls because they play football, to flip it around - did you see who married Mick Martyn?). I guess these days one night stands seem to feel a little like cyber sex for the younger folks - awkward, unfulfilling, but still a little exciting, no matter how lame you feel afterwards. Still, like I always say, no cyber sex until you buy me cyber dinner first...
What has inspired this thinking today was I saw (when I was walking past listening to Goldfrapp on the IPOD) a guy and a girl clearly on their first date, a lunch meeting for coffee and muffins at the Muffin Break store. Nice choice, safe, clean, everyone likes muffins right? Just bland enough to take the edge off the day. However, even with Monster Love on the IPOD, I could tell exactly what was going on. She was talking awkwardly but confidently, in that girl way, about something generic and safe - say, the axing of Big Brother, the taste of the muffins, or how she'd bought an Iphone. Wait, it is about an Iphone, she's pulled it out of her bag. Anyway, she was talking away quite happily, 1/2 smiling, breaking down the walls between two strangers getting to know each other, you know, all good, enjoying the muffin. Now he, and I don't know if she knew this, was plainly not listening. Not to a word. He was staring at her breasts. It was subtle, but a male can tell. Iphones, fantastic no doubt, but what do you look like naked? It was plain as day, I think even the weird looking girl with the funny eyebrows at Muffin Break seemed to notice. I don't know what happened after that, but he seemed to be preparing to sleep with her, and then leave. This may have been a rash judgement, but she was clearly being set up for a one night stand. If he had to sit through an Iphone lecture, he didn't mind. Hell, if it didn't work out, he got a muffin.
Now, this may have been a completely wrong judgement, based on years of having blokey friends, he might have really loved his Iphone lecture. In fact, thinking back about it, the first time I ended up staying at someones house overnight purely for adult entertainment, the girl was the bloke and I was the girl, so to speak. I've already said in this blog I listen to Hannah Montana, so it's looking good isn't it? Anyway, I was at uni, I was on the Internet in that weird underground lab down the path where that bloke was always pulling himself off (we knew what you were doing) over pictures of fat girls. I was sitting doing work, when this quite lithe, snappily dressed brunette girl with great legs and no hips came into the lab, probably the first girl I'd seen in real life with a tattoo. I was writing an e-mail to my friend with my usual pop culture drivel, when this girl just for no reason at all began singing that song "Sex and Candy" - remember that song? Marcys Playground? What was with indie bands in 1997? Fastball? Harvey Danger? Remember them? Anyway, yes, so she starts singing it really loudly, and it's clearly directed at me that she smelled sex and candy. I was a shy, naive Burnie boy but it was pretty clear to me that I was being hit on really aggressively. But what to do, what to say? This is what I said, verbatim, and if it happens to you, I hope it works for you as well. "Well, we can start with candy" and handed her a square of Dairy Milk. Is that lame? Or is that smooth? Is that smoother than a muffin and an Iphone?
Either way, she was treated to a wonderful seven minutes later that night and a bowl of Nutri Grain in the morning. Ah, self deprecation, how to end any blog post I find...
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Fashion
Yesterdays post about sales pressure probably made me sound like a paranoid old grump, but I was thinking about it today, and I went into Cash Converters, and three people were converging to watch me and make sure that I wasn't stealing 2nd hand copies of the American Hi-Fi album or pressure me into buying a copy of Meatballs. I wasn't quite sure, but it was really horrible. The proportion of staff in the store to me seems a little high at 3:1, especially in a hovel of a 2nd hand store. Cash Converters where I work is pretty horrible, and has a funny smell in it. I can't imagine what possesses people to shop there, never mind steal anything - I was only in there to try and find a copy of Eat Your Peas, the old Martin/Molloy album - or cause havoc in the cassette aisle.
There's not really a lot to say about Tasmanian fashion. I don't think there are many Anne Maree Cooksleys wandering around Hobart waiting to be discovered, not too many high fashion stores full of expensive designer clothes. Most people think everyone in Tasmania wears flannels and slippers to begin with, so why worry? The reason I wanted to write about fashion is because there's an advert on the radio that makes out the Spanish and Italians are better than the Tasmanians because they spend a lot of money on clothes. Now, I'm no oil painting, or Leilani Kai if you will, but I know that when I come back from London with, say, an expensive T-shirt (my Colombia Records T-shirt was the worst) no one is going to give a toss here in Hobart, and there's something quite re-assuring, and indeed cheap about that. To give you an example, there's a really, really, really hot girl who works behind the bar at Central (you know who she is) and one day, I saw her in JB Hifi, and she had on pink fluffy slippers and a purple T-shirt and tracksuit just happily flicking through the CDs. Had she been in London, I think she'd never have gone out to HMV in anything that cost less than a grand, but in Hobart, there's nowhere to spend a grand, so why bother? I know that as long as I have jeans on, that's all the effort I need to put in. The problem is, I'm completely out of shape - maybe if I looked a bit more like Todd Sampson, fashion would make me look better - and I know that if I wear a baseball cap I look like I've got a terminal illness, if I wear flash sunglasses they look stolen...
My favourite fashion store in Hobart, and I don't know if it's still open, is the semi legendary African Delights. It's probably my favourite store because of one of the most hilarious radio ads in the history of the world, as two middle aged white guys discuss "do rags" and where one of the wiggers got his "bling", and of course, he got it at African Delights, Hobarts official home of "homeboy gear" (as opposed to those thousands of bootleg stores full of basketball tops from the Burstin Celtics). I love people wearing homeboy gear, especially incredibly white pasty gentlemen who hang around outside Subway dissing bitches and less fly boys than themselves. I'm always really impressed that in Tasmania, Subway is the official meeting point for homeboys, because bling wearers gotta eat healthy y'all. I don't wear any bling, but I bought a Pittsburgh Penguins hockey shirt in Burnie, and I thought that the old people were eyeing me suspiciously. I couldn't go much further though in my homeboy career, as I am amazingly white, in fact the only album I owned at that time was the Lisa Loeb album on cassette, and I bought it from a girl in a record shop in Burnie in a pink T-shirt with a photo of her puppy on it. I can think of a few less black scenarios, but not many...even The Cosby Show is less black than two white people talking about Lisa Loeb...
Of course as I mentioned before, the peak of Hobart Fashion is a mention in Attitude, the Hobart Mercury rather poor equivalent of Hit Magazine in the Herald Sun. There was a very large, very angry Aboriginal girl in the middle of the mall back in the days when the mall was a trouble spot, and she basically ran the whole mall. Her fashion style was simple - she wore black, and she wore it angrily. She even yelled at Dancing Man one day. And she got in Attitude as a style icon. In Hobart, as long as you are vaguely attractive, you can pretty much set your own fashion agenda, no one really cares. Sandals with socks? Dressing entirely like June Jones? Ugh Boots and a puffy jacket? Sorted. The only ever dispute I had with fashion living here is from a night out at Customs. A hot girl had the same jumper as me and she was allowed in and I wasn't - why did we have the same top on? I have no idea, but it was pretty obvious that we were at a beautiful/ugly impasse. There was nothing between us except our faces, and she had an advantage. I like Customs, but this was one time where they even outdid the violence of Syrup or the vomit ban of Irish. In the end, I got in after one of my friends threatened to go to the papers, and she ended up spewing in the toilets for about 3 hours after eating a dodgy prawn while her friend said "she'll still be right to root later".
Fashion may go out of style, but class, it never does...
There's not really a lot to say about Tasmanian fashion. I don't think there are many Anne Maree Cooksleys wandering around Hobart waiting to be discovered, not too many high fashion stores full of expensive designer clothes. Most people think everyone in Tasmania wears flannels and slippers to begin with, so why worry? The reason I wanted to write about fashion is because there's an advert on the radio that makes out the Spanish and Italians are better than the Tasmanians because they spend a lot of money on clothes. Now, I'm no oil painting, or Leilani Kai if you will, but I know that when I come back from London with, say, an expensive T-shirt (my Colombia Records T-shirt was the worst) no one is going to give a toss here in Hobart, and there's something quite re-assuring, and indeed cheap about that. To give you an example, there's a really, really, really hot girl who works behind the bar at Central (you know who she is) and one day, I saw her in JB Hifi, and she had on pink fluffy slippers and a purple T-shirt and tracksuit just happily flicking through the CDs. Had she been in London, I think she'd never have gone out to HMV in anything that cost less than a grand, but in Hobart, there's nowhere to spend a grand, so why bother? I know that as long as I have jeans on, that's all the effort I need to put in. The problem is, I'm completely out of shape - maybe if I looked a bit more like Todd Sampson, fashion would make me look better - and I know that if I wear a baseball cap I look like I've got a terminal illness, if I wear flash sunglasses they look stolen...
My favourite fashion store in Hobart, and I don't know if it's still open, is the semi legendary African Delights. It's probably my favourite store because of one of the most hilarious radio ads in the history of the world, as two middle aged white guys discuss "do rags" and where one of the wiggers got his "bling", and of course, he got it at African Delights, Hobarts official home of "homeboy gear" (as opposed to those thousands of bootleg stores full of basketball tops from the Burstin Celtics). I love people wearing homeboy gear, especially incredibly white pasty gentlemen who hang around outside Subway dissing bitches and less fly boys than themselves. I'm always really impressed that in Tasmania, Subway is the official meeting point for homeboys, because bling wearers gotta eat healthy y'all. I don't wear any bling, but I bought a Pittsburgh Penguins hockey shirt in Burnie, and I thought that the old people were eyeing me suspiciously. I couldn't go much further though in my homeboy career, as I am amazingly white, in fact the only album I owned at that time was the Lisa Loeb album on cassette, and I bought it from a girl in a record shop in Burnie in a pink T-shirt with a photo of her puppy on it. I can think of a few less black scenarios, but not many...even The Cosby Show is less black than two white people talking about Lisa Loeb...
Of course as I mentioned before, the peak of Hobart Fashion is a mention in Attitude, the Hobart Mercury rather poor equivalent of Hit Magazine in the Herald Sun. There was a very large, very angry Aboriginal girl in the middle of the mall back in the days when the mall was a trouble spot, and she basically ran the whole mall. Her fashion style was simple - she wore black, and she wore it angrily. She even yelled at Dancing Man one day. And she got in Attitude as a style icon. In Hobart, as long as you are vaguely attractive, you can pretty much set your own fashion agenda, no one really cares. Sandals with socks? Dressing entirely like June Jones? Ugh Boots and a puffy jacket? Sorted. The only ever dispute I had with fashion living here is from a night out at Customs. A hot girl had the same jumper as me and she was allowed in and I wasn't - why did we have the same top on? I have no idea, but it was pretty obvious that we were at a beautiful/ugly impasse. There was nothing between us except our faces, and she had an advantage. I like Customs, but this was one time where they even outdid the violence of Syrup or the vomit ban of Irish. In the end, I got in after one of my friends threatened to go to the papers, and she ended up spewing in the toilets for about 3 hours after eating a dodgy prawn while her friend said "she'll still be right to root later".
Fashion may go out of style, but class, it never does...
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Sales Pressure
When I go and see if blue eye shadow girl is working (she was today, she looked lovely and happy) I always make sure to avoid the book section. This is, as I said before, because there's an old woman there with glasses who seems to spend twenty four hours a day, seven days a week working with her book mobile to restock the bookshelves. This means that if I was to pick up a book, she would probably ensure that I couldn't read it, glance at it or even pick it up without picking up on it and saying something like "wow, must be a good book!" - I really hate sales pressure in a store, you know when someone in a store makes sure you are buying not browsing, and it means that I will never go into that store again. Which is weird because my glorious job in the bank I'm constantly pressured to sell, sell, sell, so maybe I just don't like it in real life. I hate anyone trying to sell me anything, and I don't care how rude it appears. Yesterday was the pits. I was walking through the shopping mall and this woman went "Hi! I was just waiting for you! Like you were for me! What's your name!" - I just kept on walking. She was from the WWF (not the organisation my beloved and beautiful Leilani Kai wrestled for, the panda one) and it just so awful and cheesy, it really annoyed me. Unless she really was chatting me up, in which case...never mind. What kind of future would we have - throwing red paint on animal haters? No thankyou.
The worst store for sales pressure here in Tasmania, apart from JBHIFI chasing people trying to watch the football out, has always been Angus and Robertson in Hobart. I suppose the one thing you can say about them is at least they are subtle about it, and I suppose it is very annoying that people are looking at magazines with Ana Ivanovic on the front and then leaving without buying so much as a piece of crepe paper or a highlighter. However, how they do it, whether you are in the bookstore or the newsagent part, is to suddenly appear, almost but not quite push you out of the way, and then start stocking the shelves right next to you and almost pressing against your elbow until you leave. It's really awkward and uncomfortable, more than you would know unless you've gone through it. And they never send the attractive staff, it's always the the oldest staff or the mingers or fat blokes they send. I remember (and I apologize for this) when I was about 16, I bought a Playboy (I'd like to think it was irony) and the woman audibly grunted in disgust. Way to make feel me less self conscious. That's probably real sales pressure, when you take a magazine up to the counter and they don't want to sell you it, they'd rather you bought something else. It must be a newsagency thing - my local newsagent where I work actually will come and put magazines around you in plastic as a demonstration that magazines are for buying, not reading. I hope Blue Eye Shadow Girl doesn't do this...
At Melbourne Airport, the worst job in the entire world has to be being the guy who has to shout at people to try and get them to buy credit cards. This is sales pressure where I feel sorry for the person who has that job, and not just annoying sales pressure like the girl at Guess What puts on you just because she's annoying and wants you to leave so she can get back to New Idea and her Kit Kat. It must be a terrible job to yell at people as they go down a concourse, with harassed kids and luggage that hasn't arrived, to try and get them to sign up for an AMEX card. At least the girl who yells at people to offer them free wine has a gimmick - free wine. This guy doesn't even have a free pen to offer people. I can imagine him psyching himself up in the changing area, taking deep breaths, trying to convince himself that today, if he's really on song, he can sell one, just one credit card. I actually spent some of my unemployed time (when I wasn't sleeping with a netballer and watching daytime TV) pissing around on a course that was going to teach me how to sell knives and the people at this course got really, really fired up by the motivational host, and were actually chanting "sell, sell, sell!" - I did too, in fairness, because it meant I got a paycheck that I got to spend on gifts for her, but I wondered how these people were so conned. You were going to sell knifes door to door? Safely? And make millions? Yeah, and I'm dating Jodie Low...
I've mentioned before about the park in Penguin and how after dark before they cleaned it up you could pretty much get anything you wanted from drugs to hardware from the local "youths" - however, in Burnie, it was the opposite, the sales pressure in the park came from people trying to take things off you, the local muggers. That's a pretty extreme form of sales pressure, people trying to take your wallet off you. Burnie wasn't rough by any means, but it had a large, winding track that had no lights at all, perfect for your workaday mugger, pressuring you into selling your wallet or wedding ring, with none of the charm of the local Penguin kids. I remember seeing someone mugged at Carols by Candelight, the last place you would expect anyone to get mugged. Friendly carollers, school kids with candels, probably a performance by Julie Anthony, and knife crime. Don't they all go together? I saw this guy try and mug a woman for her purse but thankfully for everyone, he didn't get it, and I swear the reason he didn't get it was because people who were walking past stopped and went "Awww...don't" and he was all "Shut up" and trying to look menacing and they were all "Come on, it's Xmas!" and he just sort of wandered off bored and a bit bewildered. In the end, he just wasn't good at putting sales pressure on - he'd have lasted one day selling credit cards at the airport...
You don't think he got the knife though off a knife selling course do you?
The worst store for sales pressure here in Tasmania, apart from JBHIFI chasing people trying to watch the football out, has always been Angus and Robertson in Hobart. I suppose the one thing you can say about them is at least they are subtle about it, and I suppose it is very annoying that people are looking at magazines with Ana Ivanovic on the front and then leaving without buying so much as a piece of crepe paper or a highlighter. However, how they do it, whether you are in the bookstore or the newsagent part, is to suddenly appear, almost but not quite push you out of the way, and then start stocking the shelves right next to you and almost pressing against your elbow until you leave. It's really awkward and uncomfortable, more than you would know unless you've gone through it. And they never send the attractive staff, it's always the the oldest staff or the mingers or fat blokes they send. I remember (and I apologize for this) when I was about 16, I bought a Playboy (I'd like to think it was irony) and the woman audibly grunted in disgust. Way to make feel me less self conscious. That's probably real sales pressure, when you take a magazine up to the counter and they don't want to sell you it, they'd rather you bought something else. It must be a newsagency thing - my local newsagent where I work actually will come and put magazines around you in plastic as a demonstration that magazines are for buying, not reading. I hope Blue Eye Shadow Girl doesn't do this...
At Melbourne Airport, the worst job in the entire world has to be being the guy who has to shout at people to try and get them to buy credit cards. This is sales pressure where I feel sorry for the person who has that job, and not just annoying sales pressure like the girl at Guess What puts on you just because she's annoying and wants you to leave so she can get back to New Idea and her Kit Kat. It must be a terrible job to yell at people as they go down a concourse, with harassed kids and luggage that hasn't arrived, to try and get them to sign up for an AMEX card. At least the girl who yells at people to offer them free wine has a gimmick - free wine. This guy doesn't even have a free pen to offer people. I can imagine him psyching himself up in the changing area, taking deep breaths, trying to convince himself that today, if he's really on song, he can sell one, just one credit card. I actually spent some of my unemployed time (when I wasn't sleeping with a netballer and watching daytime TV) pissing around on a course that was going to teach me how to sell knives and the people at this course got really, really fired up by the motivational host, and were actually chanting "sell, sell, sell!" - I did too, in fairness, because it meant I got a paycheck that I got to spend on gifts for her, but I wondered how these people were so conned. You were going to sell knifes door to door? Safely? And make millions? Yeah, and I'm dating Jodie Low...
I've mentioned before about the park in Penguin and how after dark before they cleaned it up you could pretty much get anything you wanted from drugs to hardware from the local "youths" - however, in Burnie, it was the opposite, the sales pressure in the park came from people trying to take things off you, the local muggers. That's a pretty extreme form of sales pressure, people trying to take your wallet off you. Burnie wasn't rough by any means, but it had a large, winding track that had no lights at all, perfect for your workaday mugger, pressuring you into selling your wallet or wedding ring, with none of the charm of the local Penguin kids. I remember seeing someone mugged at Carols by Candelight, the last place you would expect anyone to get mugged. Friendly carollers, school kids with candels, probably a performance by Julie Anthony, and knife crime. Don't they all go together? I saw this guy try and mug a woman for her purse but thankfully for everyone, he didn't get it, and I swear the reason he didn't get it was because people who were walking past stopped and went "Awww...don't" and he was all "Shut up" and trying to look menacing and they were all "Come on, it's Xmas!" and he just sort of wandered off bored and a bit bewildered. In the end, he just wasn't good at putting sales pressure on - he'd have lasted one day selling credit cards at the airport...
You don't think he got the knife though off a knife selling course do you?
Monday, July 21, 2008
Actress Slash Model
I really miss the North West Coast on days like this - it's freezing cold in Hobart, the rain is bouncing off the ground, the nights are dark by 5 in the afternoon, people are talking about road closures, and everyone is on edge and unable to go out. It's great for local football, because nothing is as exciting to people down here as a day in the slush and the mud, and it's probably quite exciting for farmers that after a drought we get a lot of rain, but everyone else is pretty miserable. School children are huddling in corners swearing with their hoods up, the hoods that hang outside my local store are nowhere to be seen, and when I landed last night on the Virgin Blue (only 30 minutes late this time - picking between Virgin Blue and Jetstar is deciding whether you want to lose the left testicle or the right) plane, the first thing visible out the window was the tarmac, that's how dark it was. What I was interested in though for the point of this blog (apart from being yelled at by a dickhead to have my bag scanned for bananas) was the woman in Melbourne Airport giving out free wine. A noble gig - except I heard her on her break, on her mobile phone, describing herself not as a wine seller, but as an actress slash model - my favourite phrase in the English language that isn't "smart casual" or "Fraser injured".
I haven't heard as much mention of actress slash model down here in Tasmania, but when I first moved here, it was euphemism for prostitute. I've never visited a prostitute, but I remember when the sailors used to come for shore leave in Hobart, the prostitutes used to hang around the docks handing out fliers and leaflets. To hide from the police, the leaflets would say "come to a party full of actress slash models" - the reason I know this is because when the sailors came to down the first time, we actually went out drinking with a few of them as a share house, and they showed us the leaflets. They were full of sitcom standard innuendo about putting their ship in dock and mooring at the house, I'm sure you know what that refers to. I wish I still had the leaflet actually, there were some interesting drawings on the leaflets done in pen - anyway, the point was, I think that was about the time that the phrase actress slash model sort of became a local jibe for, shall we say, a loose woman, although I've never heard the insult repeated in the same way interstate - maybe because it's not that difficult to find hookers on the mainland, particularly in Melbourne (or for that matter, a transvesite hotel, but that's another story).
In England, I think the phrase most used is glamour model, referring to a nude Page 3 "Cor stunnah", but my favourite English phrase is "writer slash waiter" (or waitress). I really that phrase, because a bit like actress slash model, it's got so much aspiration attached to it, that somehow despite the fact that life sucks and you have to face another cleaning tables, if you just stick at it, someone will pick up your script from out of the trash and give you your big break into show business. I applied this phrase throughout my short lived creative writing class in the Glass House here in Hobart a few years ago. The first time I went, I had the first hangover I've ever had in my entire life from drinking too many fishbowls at Tacos, and I had done no research or course preparation at all, so I made up a short story (the point was writing short stories for film) about a guy who was a writer slash waiter who ends up trying to get his script to a famous person through the course of a meal and just screws it up all the time. Hey, funny premise, as they say in the classics. It was really awful, but I think I spoke for an hour on the subject and I must have still been drunk because I spun this junk into the most wonderful story and I think everyone saw dollar signs. Oh, to have not been lazy and done proper work on it...
In the Advocate, the North West Coasts premiere paper, in about 1994, there used to be a lot of phone sex lines advertised - there may still be - and apart from hot granny action, the one I always remember was "lustful local actresses waiting for you". Now, that's brilliant, although the slash wasn't in there - lustful local actress slash models waiting for you would have been perfect. I always really wanted to ring it, just to see if after you got past the usual what are you doing, what are you wearing, despite your sexy voice can you assure me you don't look like Amanda Vanstone, you know, the usual - I wonder if at that point, they asked you to read a script or listen to their character voices or what was going on. Scarily, the only local actress I knew was about 70, had worked on a musical version of Chinatown, and to my knowledge, her voice was husky, not lustful. I think just knowing her put me off ever ringing just in case she was the one behind the phone line. And why actresses? Was there a casting couch fetish I missed in the early 90s? It wasn't quite as bad as busty Burnie cheerleaders (so specific), but it was still an interesting phone line.
And to think, I've done a whole post about actress slash models, and not one mention of Anne Maree Cooksley...for shame...
I haven't heard as much mention of actress slash model down here in Tasmania, but when I first moved here, it was euphemism for prostitute. I've never visited a prostitute, but I remember when the sailors used to come for shore leave in Hobart, the prostitutes used to hang around the docks handing out fliers and leaflets. To hide from the police, the leaflets would say "come to a party full of actress slash models" - the reason I know this is because when the sailors came to down the first time, we actually went out drinking with a few of them as a share house, and they showed us the leaflets. They were full of sitcom standard innuendo about putting their ship in dock and mooring at the house, I'm sure you know what that refers to. I wish I still had the leaflet actually, there were some interesting drawings on the leaflets done in pen - anyway, the point was, I think that was about the time that the phrase actress slash model sort of became a local jibe for, shall we say, a loose woman, although I've never heard the insult repeated in the same way interstate - maybe because it's not that difficult to find hookers on the mainland, particularly in Melbourne (or for that matter, a transvesite hotel, but that's another story).
In England, I think the phrase most used is glamour model, referring to a nude Page 3 "Cor stunnah", but my favourite English phrase is "writer slash waiter" (or waitress). I really that phrase, because a bit like actress slash model, it's got so much aspiration attached to it, that somehow despite the fact that life sucks and you have to face another cleaning tables, if you just stick at it, someone will pick up your script from out of the trash and give you your big break into show business. I applied this phrase throughout my short lived creative writing class in the Glass House here in Hobart a few years ago. The first time I went, I had the first hangover I've ever had in my entire life from drinking too many fishbowls at Tacos, and I had done no research or course preparation at all, so I made up a short story (the point was writing short stories for film) about a guy who was a writer slash waiter who ends up trying to get his script to a famous person through the course of a meal and just screws it up all the time. Hey, funny premise, as they say in the classics. It was really awful, but I think I spoke for an hour on the subject and I must have still been drunk because I spun this junk into the most wonderful story and I think everyone saw dollar signs. Oh, to have not been lazy and done proper work on it...
In the Advocate, the North West Coasts premiere paper, in about 1994, there used to be a lot of phone sex lines advertised - there may still be - and apart from hot granny action, the one I always remember was "lustful local actresses waiting for you". Now, that's brilliant, although the slash wasn't in there - lustful local actress slash models waiting for you would have been perfect. I always really wanted to ring it, just to see if after you got past the usual what are you doing, what are you wearing, despite your sexy voice can you assure me you don't look like Amanda Vanstone, you know, the usual - I wonder if at that point, they asked you to read a script or listen to their character voices or what was going on. Scarily, the only local actress I knew was about 70, had worked on a musical version of Chinatown, and to my knowledge, her voice was husky, not lustful. I think just knowing her put me off ever ringing just in case she was the one behind the phone line. And why actresses? Was there a casting couch fetish I missed in the early 90s? It wasn't quite as bad as busty Burnie cheerleaders (so specific), but it was still an interesting phone line.
And to think, I've done a whole post about actress slash models, and not one mention of Anne Maree Cooksley...for shame...
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Community Pride vs Business Pride
I've had a lot of time to think about things this weekend, and not just because I've done very little but sleep since Saturday. Not just about community pride, not just about the indignity of being lost in Melbourne, not just the indignity of being stranded by the Napean Highway at 6 in the morning, not just the mysteries of Melbourne nightlife, and not just seeing someone thoroughly sick outside Bunnings Warehouse and thinking "there but for the grace of God go I", not just working on jokes about Fiddlers nightclub, and not just the mysteries of "is that girl hot, or am I just really drunk..."
No, what I mostly had time to think about was my hatred of my own team, Collingwood, in the AFL football. I went over to see them play the Kangaroos at Telstra Dome on Friday Night. I don't like Telstra Dome stadium, it's got absolutely no soul. Bottled water is 4 dollars a bottle, and I don't think you are allowed to swear. I'm always uncomfortable in the place - it's like going out with a really attractive girl who doesn't say much. I think that's what they always say about Maria Sharapova, she doesn't do good conversation. No matter how many times they say it's structurally sound or built to world class specifications, ot how many times they say your girlfriend is hot, something just isn't right. I always feel tense watching Collingwood play there, and I always end up surrounded by children. Kids at football games always really irritate me, they either cheer when they win a bit too loud, or fall asleep. Mind you, that sounds a lot like me, especially the fall asleep part, I could barely keep myself awake at the side of the highway at 5am...
Naturally, feeling this uncomfortable, we lost. I don't know if footballers care, or some nights even try. I'm sure they do, at least for a while, then they chalk it up to a bad day and stop running. I'm sure though someone like, say, Dale Thomas, listening to an entire ground paying out on him for not trying is thinking that he is doing his best, and what do they know? However, your football team is an extension of yourself, you don't want to turn up embarrassed in front of everyone supporting a lemon of a team. I realised on Friday night that no matter how much I hate the coach Mick Malthouse, and it's getting embarrassing, almost pathological, nothing changes. We think that people care who represent our football teams, but in reality, only a few of them do. Most of the players simply regard it as a bad day at work, and then go home unpeturbed. The main question now is, if I hate sitting their so much, why do I watch? It's the eternal war - disgusted, enraged fans miserable at the disrespect the team representing them and letting them down vs players who regard the game as a job, and believe they have the right to a life. If I have a bad day at the bank, I don't brood about it all week - why should they? They owe me nothing. On the other hand, if they don't try their hardest, there is no punishment - they play next week and still pick up with a greater ease than me. I really struggle with the idea that the Kangaroos wanted to win more just because they had to wear an away jumper in a home game. THAT is all it takes to make a team want to win more?
That's not my real point though. I realised I don't know anything about the suburb Collingwood are supposed to represent. Don't know a shop, don't know a street, don't know a person. Couldn't tell you the mayor, the MP or any history of the place. For a blog about community pride, I was really disappointed about this when I realised it. That said, Collingwood really aren't anything to do with Collingwood (the suburb) now. They are a multi national business, they don't play in Collingwood anymore, they don't live in Collingwood and they probably don't even need to visit there more than twice a year. If we ever won a Premiership, we'd go to a flash hotel, not parade through Collingwood. It's an era of big business, and if Tasmania got a team, it would probably be the same - we'd have kids drafted from all over Australia and represent another big business or brand. Someone like Dale Thomas could just as easily have ended up on the Gold Coast or Geelong as Collingwood. He represents a set of colours and a business, not a suburb or a set of community ideals anymore. This isn't a bad thing, it's just a little saddening. Expecting someone to care personally about their team these days is asking too much. It's an illusion, like an act of kindness in a crumbling marriage or a good day in a terrible job, or picking up a hot girl while you are drunk. It's a mirage, they care about their teammates, and themselves, but not us, not the community, and not the club. Expecting that they would is like pretending the charts still matter.
Community pride doesn't exist in the AFL anymore, we try our best to pretend otherwise, but it doesn't. It exists in a man helping another man get home after being sick outside Bunnings though - we all need to do our bit...
No, what I mostly had time to think about was my hatred of my own team, Collingwood, in the AFL football. I went over to see them play the Kangaroos at Telstra Dome on Friday Night. I don't like Telstra Dome stadium, it's got absolutely no soul. Bottled water is 4 dollars a bottle, and I don't think you are allowed to swear. I'm always uncomfortable in the place - it's like going out with a really attractive girl who doesn't say much. I think that's what they always say about Maria Sharapova, she doesn't do good conversation. No matter how many times they say it's structurally sound or built to world class specifications, ot how many times they say your girlfriend is hot, something just isn't right. I always feel tense watching Collingwood play there, and I always end up surrounded by children. Kids at football games always really irritate me, they either cheer when they win a bit too loud, or fall asleep. Mind you, that sounds a lot like me, especially the fall asleep part, I could barely keep myself awake at the side of the highway at 5am...
Naturally, feeling this uncomfortable, we lost. I don't know if footballers care, or some nights even try. I'm sure they do, at least for a while, then they chalk it up to a bad day and stop running. I'm sure though someone like, say, Dale Thomas, listening to an entire ground paying out on him for not trying is thinking that he is doing his best, and what do they know? However, your football team is an extension of yourself, you don't want to turn up embarrassed in front of everyone supporting a lemon of a team. I realised on Friday night that no matter how much I hate the coach Mick Malthouse, and it's getting embarrassing, almost pathological, nothing changes. We think that people care who represent our football teams, but in reality, only a few of them do. Most of the players simply regard it as a bad day at work, and then go home unpeturbed. The main question now is, if I hate sitting their so much, why do I watch? It's the eternal war - disgusted, enraged fans miserable at the disrespect the team representing them and letting them down vs players who regard the game as a job, and believe they have the right to a life. If I have a bad day at the bank, I don't brood about it all week - why should they? They owe me nothing. On the other hand, if they don't try their hardest, there is no punishment - they play next week and still pick up with a greater ease than me. I really struggle with the idea that the Kangaroos wanted to win more just because they had to wear an away jumper in a home game. THAT is all it takes to make a team want to win more?
That's not my real point though. I realised I don't know anything about the suburb Collingwood are supposed to represent. Don't know a shop, don't know a street, don't know a person. Couldn't tell you the mayor, the MP or any history of the place. For a blog about community pride, I was really disappointed about this when I realised it. That said, Collingwood really aren't anything to do with Collingwood (the suburb) now. They are a multi national business, they don't play in Collingwood anymore, they don't live in Collingwood and they probably don't even need to visit there more than twice a year. If we ever won a Premiership, we'd go to a flash hotel, not parade through Collingwood. It's an era of big business, and if Tasmania got a team, it would probably be the same - we'd have kids drafted from all over Australia and represent another big business or brand. Someone like Dale Thomas could just as easily have ended up on the Gold Coast or Geelong as Collingwood. He represents a set of colours and a business, not a suburb or a set of community ideals anymore. This isn't a bad thing, it's just a little saddening. Expecting someone to care personally about their team these days is asking too much. It's an illusion, like an act of kindness in a crumbling marriage or a good day in a terrible job, or picking up a hot girl while you are drunk. It's a mirage, they care about their teammates, and themselves, but not us, not the community, and not the club. Expecting that they would is like pretending the charts still matter.
Community pride doesn't exist in the AFL anymore, we try our best to pretend otherwise, but it doesn't. It exists in a man helping another man get home after being sick outside Bunnings though - we all need to do our bit...
Thursday, July 17, 2008
There's a Hot Dog Store where the creatures meet
There's this advert on Foxtel right now (no, not Maori Poppins) where this girl in her underwear says that she likes guys with back fat and a hairy back, guys who watch a lot of football, guys who don't buy her flowers and guys go to strip clubs. The tagline is "The Girlfriend" and whatever the alcoholic beverage is is the ultimate bourbon, as she is the Ultimate girlfriend, you see. However the ad just creeps me out - she seems too confident in herself, like she's planning something. If she was so carefree, I'd just think she was going to stab me in the head as soon as I was asleep. Maybe it's just me, what would I know, but I suspect she's up to something. Maybe in a later version of the ad...
Anyway, it's pretty easy to tell if a girl is really into you. I draw it from my relationship with the lost netball girl, and my future relationship with blue eye shadow girl, that a girl is really into you if she likes your friends (the girl in the ad is a little too keen to push the boyfriend out of the house) and is willing to drink with them, for this will wear off and eventually you'll have to stay at home. And if she's really into you in Hobart, she'll go with you to get late night Hobart food. I don't know if I've mentioned Mykonos yet in this place, but it's the place in Sandy Bay to go and get late night food. There's absolutely no recommendation to the place if you are sober, awake or don't like anything from salad to Red Bull to a Mars Bar being fried in batter, but if you drunk, hungover, tired, ill, sleepy or bewildered at 3 in the morning, there's no better place. Now, this is something someone told me - and it's something I didn't even realise - it's apparently a very good pick up point. Especially, how can I put this, if you like the larger lady. So I'm told. I'm told it's a chubby chasing kind of place. And I can sort of see how one guy in one group could hook up with another girl (large or otherwise) in another group while they sit on the bricks outside the real estate agency eating shockingly bad/shockingly good (it varies) chips. I don't know what happened to the two gay guys who last year seceded from Sandy Bay to make their own republic in their back garden, but if Mykonos seceded, the Tasmanian economy would lose the crucial drunk food tax money.
However, as much as people champion Mykonos, I'm not a fan (this might just be because I've never picked up there). I much prefer Hobarts hidden late night snack stop gem, the little Hot Dog shop in the middle of town, which seems to no longer be open, which is just near the VIP Driving school. I was told once at Customs that the people who worked in the hot dog shop were either reformed mental patients, homeless people, reformed drug addicts or failed reality TV stars (ooh, satire). I didn't really ever notice this, but I was then told that all the people who had been in prison were doing the cooking out the back, so they wouldn't scare the customers. I have no idea is this is true at all, I was just obsessed with the 70s style Space Invaders machine in the foyer, the delicious milkshakes, the incredibly dodgy hot dogs (was that really mustard?), the strange way every hot dog was named after a real dog and illustrated with a cartoon of that dog (what was a double poodle dog?), and the wonderful, ever present threat of violence in the place. The waiting area was incredibly small, so as you can imagine, a lot of people imagined that they were being looked at in a funny way, or that they were really first in line. Every time I went into the place, there was a fight, although oddly, I always seemed to walk in just as someone was being escorted out with a head wound. And I'll have a double rottweiller dog to go thanks...
The best memory I have of the place was I went there with a friend of mine just after I moved to Hobart, and when we went in, she was pretty much face to face with an ex of hers. There was really bad lighting, no one else in the store, and absolutely no room to move. This was really, really awkward because it was a tiny room, and I was absolutely no help, because I was all "wow, is that Space Invaders!" - there was just no way either of them could stand each other, and I think one of the staff members noticed the tension and decided to snap it by yelling "HEY! You know who was in here! A minute ago! KEVIN SHEEDY!" - this didn't work at all, since none of us liked Essendon, but it was worth a try. I know Kevin Sheedy is a man of the people, but I couldn't imagine him eating a late night hot dog, especially not in this place. So we all just kept standing in silence, until after about two minutes (and I was on level 2 by this stage) a cat just wandered in to the hot dog place. A Kylie Stray as we call it these days. I wasn't really thinking, so I said something to myself like "Ah, fresh meat for the hot dogs then" and the woman behind the counter has screamed at me "WE ONLY MINCE DOGS THANKS VERY MUCH!" and stormed off. I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure we never got our hot dogs that night, for no matter how bad late night food is, you can never, ever, ever, diss it.
Even if it is made by mental patients with minced dog...
Anyway, it's pretty easy to tell if a girl is really into you. I draw it from my relationship with the lost netball girl, and my future relationship with blue eye shadow girl, that a girl is really into you if she likes your friends (the girl in the ad is a little too keen to push the boyfriend out of the house) and is willing to drink with them, for this will wear off and eventually you'll have to stay at home. And if she's really into you in Hobart, she'll go with you to get late night Hobart food. I don't know if I've mentioned Mykonos yet in this place, but it's the place in Sandy Bay to go and get late night food. There's absolutely no recommendation to the place if you are sober, awake or don't like anything from salad to Red Bull to a Mars Bar being fried in batter, but if you drunk, hungover, tired, ill, sleepy or bewildered at 3 in the morning, there's no better place. Now, this is something someone told me - and it's something I didn't even realise - it's apparently a very good pick up point. Especially, how can I put this, if you like the larger lady. So I'm told. I'm told it's a chubby chasing kind of place. And I can sort of see how one guy in one group could hook up with another girl (large or otherwise) in another group while they sit on the bricks outside the real estate agency eating shockingly bad/shockingly good (it varies) chips. I don't know what happened to the two gay guys who last year seceded from Sandy Bay to make their own republic in their back garden, but if Mykonos seceded, the Tasmanian economy would lose the crucial drunk food tax money.
However, as much as people champion Mykonos, I'm not a fan (this might just be because I've never picked up there). I much prefer Hobarts hidden late night snack stop gem, the little Hot Dog shop in the middle of town, which seems to no longer be open, which is just near the VIP Driving school. I was told once at Customs that the people who worked in the hot dog shop were either reformed mental patients, homeless people, reformed drug addicts or failed reality TV stars (ooh, satire). I didn't really ever notice this, but I was then told that all the people who had been in prison were doing the cooking out the back, so they wouldn't scare the customers. I have no idea is this is true at all, I was just obsessed with the 70s style Space Invaders machine in the foyer, the delicious milkshakes, the incredibly dodgy hot dogs (was that really mustard?), the strange way every hot dog was named after a real dog and illustrated with a cartoon of that dog (what was a double poodle dog?), and the wonderful, ever present threat of violence in the place. The waiting area was incredibly small, so as you can imagine, a lot of people imagined that they were being looked at in a funny way, or that they were really first in line. Every time I went into the place, there was a fight, although oddly, I always seemed to walk in just as someone was being escorted out with a head wound. And I'll have a double rottweiller dog to go thanks...
The best memory I have of the place was I went there with a friend of mine just after I moved to Hobart, and when we went in, she was pretty much face to face with an ex of hers. There was really bad lighting, no one else in the store, and absolutely no room to move. This was really, really awkward because it was a tiny room, and I was absolutely no help, because I was all "wow, is that Space Invaders!" - there was just no way either of them could stand each other, and I think one of the staff members noticed the tension and decided to snap it by yelling "HEY! You know who was in here! A minute ago! KEVIN SHEEDY!" - this didn't work at all, since none of us liked Essendon, but it was worth a try. I know Kevin Sheedy is a man of the people, but I couldn't imagine him eating a late night hot dog, especially not in this place. So we all just kept standing in silence, until after about two minutes (and I was on level 2 by this stage) a cat just wandered in to the hot dog place. A Kylie Stray as we call it these days. I wasn't really thinking, so I said something to myself like "Ah, fresh meat for the hot dogs then" and the woman behind the counter has screamed at me "WE ONLY MINCE DOGS THANKS VERY MUCH!" and stormed off. I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure we never got our hot dogs that night, for no matter how bad late night food is, you can never, ever, ever, diss it.
Even if it is made by mental patients with minced dog...
Confessions of a Lapsed Catholic
June Jones
Originally uploaded by JungsPN
I was trying really hard to find a particular picture to go with a post I had planned on Gagebrook - but maybe next time. I know there's been a lot of people looking for pictures of June Jones from Aerobics Oz Style so here is one to pass the time (I'd have just had another Leilani Kai picture) - incidentally, in my post about Aerobics Oz Style, I forgot to mention the incredibly weird imported to the UK series where they performed in front of blue screen images of Ayers Rock and the desert - what the hell was that all about?
I am enjoying our new radio station at work, especially given they are repeatedly plugging a vinyl revival show on Sunday night, with a special tribute to Bill Wyman. That's fantastic, not so fantastic if you are a 15 year old girl I guess. Anyway, it's kept us away from the religious channel, which is probably a good thing. I like ULTRAs spirit though, they do a lot of good work in the community, it's just the ads that bother me. I've never really bought into religious advertising - there's some great ones for the Church of Latter Day Saints featuring a limbless swimmer who gets a round of applause just for finishing (which wouldn't happen in Burnie - you cost the team a swimming race, you are going down), a kid who crashes a car through a chicken coop and almost kills Grandad, only to be let off the hook for telling the truth (I should have tried that one day huh), and one that features a Dad getting off work to go and watch a movie with his kid (not in K-Rudds Australia buddy). None of these ads seem to ring true at all, they all seem to bring up John Howards Australia. That's before we even get to 3 Pockets in My Overalls, Desmond Tutu talking about a butterfly and In a Jungle one day in a land far away...
While the adverts are over the top, weird, make absolutely no sense and oddly happy in an era when no one is happy, I am impressed with the fervour that the Popes visit has caused, although I'm a bit annoyed I'm much too old now to be part of World Youth Day. I don't like that religion, community pride and hard work is somehow now associated with Guy Sebastian and lameness, since I'd like people to have more community pride, and I'd like that to have a much cooler star associated with it (Melissa Mars?). I understand the religion part of it is pretty lame to people though - I think more people these days believe Josh Fraser will one day be a quality ruckman that a snake caused the world to change. I'm a lapsed Catholic, but I don't have anything angry to say about Catholics or any jokes about priests. In Penguin, I was a Sunday school Jesus in a play, that was the first religion thing I ever did. Luckily for me, I wasn't Jesus being crucified, I don't think anyone wanted to see topless 6 year old me trying to act "hurt", but I know what a serious little weirdo I was, and so I would have given it everything. Later, I was Jesus again, riding a donkey through the school to celebrate Easter - now, I totally, totally wish I could remember, because I can't, who or what the donkey was, if it was a skateboard, a fat kid, or I just walked. I really hope it was a fat kid, but I do know they spent ages drawing a moustache on me in felt tip, and it was a real hard job to get it off. I needed a felt tip razor after that one. I also don't know why I was continually cast as Jesus. I don't think Jesus was blonde...or pale...or obnoxious...
I can tell you exactly when I went off religion - Burnie Star Of The Sea church, May 1987, when I was chastised by a Nun for smiling, and then she went me after the mass. I was a kid, but I wish I'd stood up for myself. I think up until that point, I was quite a decent quiet religious person, but her piety and angry tone really put me off for life. Some reputations are hard to shake - once Effie Michaels couldn't do a leg curl, June Jones never forgave her - and I'm pretty sure any chance I had of being involved in church fundraising or being an altar boy died at that moment. Well, that and i got stung by a wasp at Penguin Sunday School, it's all a tapestry.
Of course, when I moved back to Scotland, I had to discover religion all over again, because it was another reason why I got punched. There was no such thing as a vague or lapsed Catholic. If you are Catholic, half the population hates you and you have to hate them. I'm not sure you become religious to help the community or you belief in God, you just believe in Boyd or McDonald. I don't remember in Penguin ever hating another religion or anything like that - I remember once we vaguely hated a public school because they were poor, but that's just good old fashioned snobbery. Actually, I do remember one time the Priest went off on a rant about Buddhists and alternative medicines, when he thought no one was listening...it was the talk of the milk bar for ages.
I'd love to be more helpful in the community, but I've left religion behind. I only believe in one thing now - the devine healing power of Egg Flip Big Ms...delicious...who couldn't believe in that...
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Tassie vs The AFL
Melissa Mars
Originally uploaded by JungsPN
So today, she goes back to her old hair, and looks great again. I guess I wasn't the only one who thought it was awful. I thought you all might like a Melissa Mars picture. Go and find an MP3 of Apocalips, the best song of 2008. Do yourself a favour, as Molly Meldrum would say between homophobic jokes about him on Hey Hey.
Since this is essentially a Tasmanian blog, you might be wondering, the hell aren't you talking about Tasmania trying to get into the AFL? For those of you who don't know, the Australian Football League (Aussie Rules) has decided to bring in a 17th expansion team on the Gold Coast, and an 18th expansion team in West Sydney. The team in West Sydney is going to fail completely because no one in West Sydney is interested in football, but this is the reason they will get a team, in case one day they are interested, while Tasmania is so interested in football, they don't need to put a team here because we already like football. A 10000 crowd in West Sydney will be amazing, 25000 in Tassie is unsustainable. Follow? Good, because the bogans don't. They are out in force with bumper stickers and radio phone ins, and it's doing no good at all because the AFL hates us, and completely patronises us. Let's make this something I can relate to - it's like if I fancy Leilani Kai and have a shot with her, and she fancies someone totally not interested in her even though I'm making lots of money and drive a fast car, because, even though he's ugly and a problem drinker, in 40 years he's inheriting a vast fortune - maybe - and has potential one day to be a catch. The simple answer to all of this would be for us all to be uninterested in football and get a soccer team, that's my idea, or get interested in monster trucks and have no one go to a football game ever again, but we're in too deep.
It's good though to have ambitions beyond your station, even if you know they can never be achieved. I went to school with this South African kid who used to always say "You can do anything! Just put your mind to it!" - and we'd come back with all these things like "So, what, if I wanted to play NBA basketball I could!" or "If I wanted to jump off a cliff and live, I could!" or "If I wanted to go out with Effie Michaels, I could!" (that was mostly me). He'd always tell us we could do anything, and when this kid dropped out of school to form a country line dancing academy, he was the only one to wish him well and believe in him. I wonder what became of him, he was always so positive, I'd hate for him to have a crappy life and be disabused of all his sunshine and energy. Luckily for me, I'm Scottish, ambitions are generally crushed pretty early on. I think the only kid with ambition when I went to school in Scotland was the girl with the ambition to sneakily grope every single boy in class during woodwork. I think she managed it now I think about it.
My major problem with a Tasmanian AFL team (apart from there's no way I'd support them vs Collingwood) is that all it does is create more footballers. There's a lot of footballers out there already, and they already get into Syrup without paying and get all the girls. It's probably one of my main regrets in life that I wasn't better at sport. On the North West Coast, it was drummed into everyone that if you played football, you could do anything you wanted. My Dad always remembers this one time when the girls netball team (one of whom was really hot) won the state title, and it was the footballers brought on stage to get congratulations for just winning a game. We all had to applaud them for one win after like ten straight losses. I know that when an AFL footballer gets into a nightclub, they take over the place, so it's going to be a nightmare thinking of them going into the Saloon in Launceston or down here at the Observatory (or "The O", as I found it it's called by hip kids). God help us all if, say, Tasmania beat Collingwood, the reception they would get. As I've said before, in Penguin, the WAGs of the local football team used to go in at 1/2 time and scrape the mud off the players boots with Paddle Pop sticks, so you can imagine what they'd do for an AFL footballer. And that's before we get to the "You think you are so great!" dickheads looking to punch them...
The other problem of course that always gets mentioned is that it will kill off local football, which I would hate. Although, to be honest, it's already dead. The last local football game I went to was part past players re-union and part creche, and the crowd was tiny. The last places the local football club means something is places like Dodges Ferry where there's absolutely nothing else to do. I've spent a couple of days down there, and to be honest, there's so much drinking, it's like the 80s in Penguin. I don't think it would matter if Tasmania had three AFL teams, the Dodges Ferry community would still go to the local football. In truth, this has nothing at all to do with the game, it's about 1 dollar Boags. And the ever present threat of on field violence. And more 1 dollar boags. It's just not like the old days when Peter Gilligan would talk about local football losses like someone had died. "City South...............", he'd say with a long, long pause..."No good...just......no good". Then they'd bring on, like, the coach of Longford and he'd talk like they'd won the champion of the universe title, and at then, he'd get a loaf of bread and a big ham. Ah, the good old days.
So there's a chance that getting an AFL team might create some local pride in the state, at the expense of local pride in the town, and that we might actually, you know, go to a football game to watch the football rather than drink and bitch about AFL. To be honest, given the AFL response, I'm not sure I want a team. After a while, if Leilani Kai keeps turning you down, you have to settle for Judy Martin. I'd love for local football to come back as it used to be, but it's not going to happen. After a while, we'll focus on what's really important - Muay Thai kick boxing, I'm sure they won't patronise us...
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Theres a Store where the Creatures meet
So I found out yesterday that popular fashion designer Alannah Hill (no, me neither) was not only born in Geeveston, here in Tasmania, but her parents owned the world famous Penguin milk bar. Now, this was on Wikipedia, so there's a better than average chance it was complete rubbish and tomorrow it will say she got her big break at the Geeveston show when she won best pig in show, but it is really interesting to think that someone made it out from under the oppression of running the family business (believe me, you don't want that) to fulfil their dreams, even if it was via running away and joining the circus. And to think, it must have been HER parents that were the Golden Gaytime Gigglers...
It's interesting to me that this is a blog essentially about local pride, and i haven't taken the time to talk about the local shop. Now, this isn't referring to, say, the big Coles Supermarket or a thinly disguised franchise "with the same old owners", I'm talking about Cut Price Sams, or the local milk bar, or even the local newsagency. I don't think it seems as important down here as it does on the NW Coast, because in Penguin it was really frowned upon to travel into Burnie and shop at Roelf Vos, when there was a local store run by local people. My local store here in Kingston isn't thought of in the same way - in fact, to be honest, it's really weird. Since I've lived there, it's had about 15 different owners. I don't want to get all Pauline Hanson on everyone, but all 15 owners have been Greek, and I think there's some sort of immigration thing going on with it, either that or it's a great way to have a holiday, come and run the shop for 6 months. The main and only reason I like it is that it is the only place in Tasmania you can get the energy drink Viper, which I suspect is banned or something given I can't find it anywhere else in the whole state. And when I first moved down there they had one of the greatest front of store paint jobs I've ever seen - a twisty auburn cartoon snake that should have painted in a museum, but it's certainly not part of the local community, although it does seem to be a gathering point for some of the creatures of the night. Hooded tops, blank expressions, armed with sticks. You know the kind...
Anyway, Penguin Milk Bar was a fantastic little shop. It was always the place you went when you got a treat, having been good at Swannies hairdressers when he was chopping your locks off (or in my case, after he cut my ear), or were feeling sick or were tired after running along the beach. The main thing I remember about it was the delicious frothy chocolate milkshakes that I always ended up ordering. I think it's because I always got a frothy chocolate milkshake when I was good and well behaved, and it was important for teaching me how to manipulate the system to my advantage. So I learned to accentuate my achievements, cut out the negative parts and not discuss my failures - in other words, lie - and it was all for the sake of a chocolate milkshake. I also loved the way adults interacted at the post office, kids interacted at the milk bar, or at least, at the post office with their parents looking at the milk bar and trying to get mum to shut up so they could get an ice cream. I also think it was the only place in Penguin that had a coin operated video game. I might be wrong on this, but I think nowhere else (except maybe the laundrette) that had Frogger, so it was very trendy. They had some really funky furniture as well, the kind of straight backed design that you just don't get these days. No stools in Penguin Milk Bar, oh no. Everyone had a proper seat. And that's before I get to how many chips you got for 10c...
In a town as small as Penguin (and yes, I do have a point, this isn't just "remember when chips were 10c a bag" nostalgia) the local store really mattered, and it was always the first place that was decorated when the football team made the Grand Final. However, at some point, they put in the Dial Arcade, a sort of shopping mall that was meant to represent the future. I don't know how well it worked, because we moved out of Penguin roughly around the time it opened, so I didn't see the rise and fall of the initial investment buzz. It was the last gasp of 80s risk and reward, and I have no idea what's still there or if it's still open, I just remember it opening. And what I remember the most is that one of the stores had this exotic, exciting ice cream store, with bright lighting and funky music. Someone told me that it was the second place in the entire world that had a machine where you could take, say, a flake, and have it crushed up and put into the ice cream. Imagine the future, mango ice cream with a crushed up bit of flake in it. Take that, Iphone generation. I really believed it, and was so excited that our little town had this magical machine with it's delicious flavour maker, and it was really hyped up. The problem was - it was awful. For some reason, it really was disgusting no matter what combination of flavour you tried to create. It was a wonderful metaphor for what everyone really thought about Penguin - a local town, for local people, with local pride and local ideas. No big city flavour makers were required. Don't bring your flashy Milan based designs to our yard thanks very much. Chocolate, Vanilla and Strawberry, that's all we need. No wonder everyone went back to the local milk bar, where things were as they always were.
I wonder what they'd make these days of Cans of Viper and hooded youths hanging outside the milk bar in Penguin...actually, I know what they'd think, it's the same as they told the recent developers...
It's interesting to me that this is a blog essentially about local pride, and i haven't taken the time to talk about the local shop. Now, this isn't referring to, say, the big Coles Supermarket or a thinly disguised franchise "with the same old owners", I'm talking about Cut Price Sams, or the local milk bar, or even the local newsagency. I don't think it seems as important down here as it does on the NW Coast, because in Penguin it was really frowned upon to travel into Burnie and shop at Roelf Vos, when there was a local store run by local people. My local store here in Kingston isn't thought of in the same way - in fact, to be honest, it's really weird. Since I've lived there, it's had about 15 different owners. I don't want to get all Pauline Hanson on everyone, but all 15 owners have been Greek, and I think there's some sort of immigration thing going on with it, either that or it's a great way to have a holiday, come and run the shop for 6 months. The main and only reason I like it is that it is the only place in Tasmania you can get the energy drink Viper, which I suspect is banned or something given I can't find it anywhere else in the whole state. And when I first moved down there they had one of the greatest front of store paint jobs I've ever seen - a twisty auburn cartoon snake that should have painted in a museum, but it's certainly not part of the local community, although it does seem to be a gathering point for some of the creatures of the night. Hooded tops, blank expressions, armed with sticks. You know the kind...
Anyway, Penguin Milk Bar was a fantastic little shop. It was always the place you went when you got a treat, having been good at Swannies hairdressers when he was chopping your locks off (or in my case, after he cut my ear), or were feeling sick or were tired after running along the beach. The main thing I remember about it was the delicious frothy chocolate milkshakes that I always ended up ordering. I think it's because I always got a frothy chocolate milkshake when I was good and well behaved, and it was important for teaching me how to manipulate the system to my advantage. So I learned to accentuate my achievements, cut out the negative parts and not discuss my failures - in other words, lie - and it was all for the sake of a chocolate milkshake. I also loved the way adults interacted at the post office, kids interacted at the milk bar, or at least, at the post office with their parents looking at the milk bar and trying to get mum to shut up so they could get an ice cream. I also think it was the only place in Penguin that had a coin operated video game. I might be wrong on this, but I think nowhere else (except maybe the laundrette) that had Frogger, so it was very trendy. They had some really funky furniture as well, the kind of straight backed design that you just don't get these days. No stools in Penguin Milk Bar, oh no. Everyone had a proper seat. And that's before I get to how many chips you got for 10c...
In a town as small as Penguin (and yes, I do have a point, this isn't just "remember when chips were 10c a bag" nostalgia) the local store really mattered, and it was always the first place that was decorated when the football team made the Grand Final. However, at some point, they put in the Dial Arcade, a sort of shopping mall that was meant to represent the future. I don't know how well it worked, because we moved out of Penguin roughly around the time it opened, so I didn't see the rise and fall of the initial investment buzz. It was the last gasp of 80s risk and reward, and I have no idea what's still there or if it's still open, I just remember it opening. And what I remember the most is that one of the stores had this exotic, exciting ice cream store, with bright lighting and funky music. Someone told me that it was the second place in the entire world that had a machine where you could take, say, a flake, and have it crushed up and put into the ice cream. Imagine the future, mango ice cream with a crushed up bit of flake in it. Take that, Iphone generation. I really believed it, and was so excited that our little town had this magical machine with it's delicious flavour maker, and it was really hyped up. The problem was - it was awful. For some reason, it really was disgusting no matter what combination of flavour you tried to create. It was a wonderful metaphor for what everyone really thought about Penguin - a local town, for local people, with local pride and local ideas. No big city flavour makers were required. Don't bring your flashy Milan based designs to our yard thanks very much. Chocolate, Vanilla and Strawberry, that's all we need. No wonder everyone went back to the local milk bar, where things were as they always were.
I wonder what they'd make these days of Cans of Viper and hooded youths hanging outside the milk bar in Penguin...actually, I know what they'd think, it's the same as they told the recent developers...
Honesty and Polagizing
ThedevineMsKai2
Originally uploaded by JungsPN
I feel really educated today to learn the gay stalker in the Dominos advert, the one from New Zealand, is MAORI Poppins. It's still creepy, but at least the pun has a point. Don't mind me, I'm just slow - have a Leilani Kai picture to make up for it.
Today something weird happened, blue eye shadow girl had a really horrible awful haircut. Now, obviously, this is nothing to do with me, I just like looking at her, but it was a really bad sort of shag cut. It really impinged on her door bitch abilities - it was really, really bad. It made me think about how knowing me, I'd probably say something to her if we went out, then cause a massive fight. I don't think anyone is really ever prepared for "do I look fat in this" or "the blue or the red" type of questions. I try and spare peoples feelings when I can, but I think back to when I was having my dope smoking, casual affair with the netball player when I was older - I don't think it ever recovered from the day she changed her hair colour. I didn't even say anything, I honestly thought I was just taking my time to adjust, but she was insecure about making the change to begin with, and I don't think my look helped. I don't think anyone is really good at feigning hapiness when their partner changes their look for the worse, it's something we (and I mean especially men from Tasmania) do really badly. In Penguin, they virtually announce in the Advocate their partner looks minging. I think there's a speakers corner and a support group for men who's girlfriend has gone redhead.
I was a terrible little liar when I was a teenager. I really was, I was always trying to hide bad school marks and there's so much my parents just don't know about me. Nothing bad, but certainly not that I spent most of my time when I was looking for a job at some girls house smoking dope. I also have quite an active imagination to this day, and I'm always thinking what my life would be like if I was, say, a guest on On The Couch or a wrestler or something, which really helps me pass the time on slow days. There seems to be a general community denial down here from individuals that they are old, or past it, or won't suddenly wake up tomorrow richer and happier. I saw so many funky dressed 50 year olds at the Tim Rogers gig, it was odd. The girl in the flower shop (who, by the way, is really unaware people going down on the escalator can see down her top, it's virtually a school boy dare every lunch time) seems to spend her time with these really distracted wistful look on her face every day. I walked past her today and she wasn't really thinking about the flowers she was supposed to be putting in water, she was thinking about the scratchcard she had next to her desk, and was staring it, no doubt in hope that she'd win a fortune. If she was honest with herself, she'd quit and do something else, but if I was honest with myself, I wouldn't be in a bank with people I hate listening to Brian McFadden twice a day.
So if I can't be honest with myself, I don't think I have the right to say to Blue Eye Shadow girl "that's an awful hair cut", because she seems like a sweet girl, and then I'd have to apologize (or polagize, as One Republic would say). I might not have been a good honest teenager, but I was a great apologizer. My friend had to write an apology as part of a settlement with the Sydney Swans for sending Nick Davis a death threat, but I've never had to apologize for anything too bad. I'm mostly sorry that I wrote a really mean letter to a girl who wouldn't go out with me in Grade 12, and I'm sorry to the netball girl. Oddly, our relationship was really good not long after I apologized to her, but she never really forgave me, it was just my apology that was good in the short term, convincing in word and deed. I'm never convincingly angry though, I struggle to hold a grudge. My grudges are ephemeral, short term - I hold a much bigger grudge against Shane Woewodin and Richard Cole for walking out on Collingwood than I do against the boss who hated me. I'd love to get more involved in my community, I'd love to be angrier at injustice, but I apologize to make everything alright, to make the anger go away, and maybe I'm not as good at apologizing as I thought - maybe I'm unconvincing.
So having thought all that through, blue eye shadow girl, your hair cut was terrible, but I'm sorry I thought it. If it helps, you should see the state of my wardrobe. That's something I really need to apologize for...
Monday, July 14, 2008
Rocking With My Radio #2
So I mentioned yesterday at work we changed radio stations. This was quite a dramatic step forward for us as a workplace, because we actually had to, you know, talk, and, like, discuss things and all that, rather than just trying to ignore each other like we usually do. The reason for this was because our incumbent, Sea FM, was basically playing the same 6 songs all day every day - there's only so many times you can hear No Air without going slightly insane. You might be able to mount a case that that song is teaching the kids science, since it's fair question, how do you breathe with no air? Is it possible? How would you get around the issue? Who in the blue hell is Chris Brown anyway? You know - scientific questions like that. Although Sea Fm really lost me pimping out their DJ and basically getting him sex. Like I said, this wasn't due to ethics, more to the fact that when I worked in a radio station, all I got was a secret fridge of Egg Flip Big Ms. Not that I was complaining, but still.
So we switched to Hobarts other commercial radio station - HOFM. Now, let me back up a bit here. If you are thinking of making a joke along the lines of "HOFM? Where them hos at?" or some kind of joke about Hos, as in a loose woman, it's been done, in fact, it's been done by at least three comedians getting through their first 5 minutes on stage with some local references (Wil Anderson, Adam Rozenbachs, and whoever the really crap guy supporting Peter Helliar at the casino was). So we KNOW there's a joke about Hos, it's been done. Chris Brown, does he like Hos? Anyway, not a lot of thought went into this workplace conflab, it was just the next radio station down on the dial. I don't know anything about the alternative choices apart from Triple J, which has seen better days. I think there's a Heart FM (the beat of our city, allegedly), but that might just been HOFM rebranded (and featured a really creepy ad in which a young girl appeared to grope the nipples of a fat old bloke under the guise of radio station spirit), there's an ULTRA FM, which is funded by religious groups and always hits me up for donations - and there might be a gay radio station somewhere, which would be good if they were pimping out one of their DJs. Brian Harradine would be narked.
Something really interesting is that in Hobart, they haven't done a radio ratings survey for about 5 or 6 years, so no one has any idea if a show is working or any accountability. I like to think ratings are pretty much based on one thing, and that is, the amount of free stuff the DJs get and the number of in store promotions they get. I can only speak for my few listens to Sea FM but their flagship DJs, the breakfast crew Kim and Dave, they always seem to be getting free stuff or doing something at K&D Hardware or Myer. By this standard, they'd be doing better in the ratings. I'm not sure that crank phone calls or Battle Of The Sexes is revolutionary radio, but it gets you a free drill when you want it. So I have no idea if making the switch to HOFM has seen us join Hobarts more popular radio station or become hipster bennies and outcasts. We really have no idea.
Radio stations really are like mix tapes your friends give you or one of those hot hits compilations Matt King used to talk about that back Nick Cave onto Girlfriend. The good thing about HOFM for what it's worth is, yes, they do play more different songs, although playing Brian McFadden twice in one day was really stretching friendships a lot. Just like the mix tapes of old, they really throw everything at the wall in weird sequencing (the Veronices into Robert Palmer for instance). However, what I really noted was it was not just an 80s throwback in the music, but an 80s throwback in the incredibly awkward stilted banter. Brilliantly, they had a phone in asking what TV show you'd like to see brought back to the screens - reasonably funny premise, in a sort of Sub Hamich and Andy way. But they couldn't run with it - someone would ring up and say "I'd love to bring back Sea Patrol" and the DJ would go "WOW! Yeah! Let's bring that back! That rocked!" and there'd be 20 seconds of silence, until the next caller rang in and said "Bring back It's a Knockout!" and the other woman DJ would go "YEAH! WOW! I loved that show!" and....you get the idea. It was pretty perfect for me as a new listener, because it was like an awkward first date with my new radio station. And I've been on those awkward first dates, and I think the conversation quality has been about the same. I probably even brought up It's a Knockout.
I just need to know their policy regarding pimping their DJs, and we might have a second date...
So we switched to Hobarts other commercial radio station - HOFM. Now, let me back up a bit here. If you are thinking of making a joke along the lines of "HOFM? Where them hos at?" or some kind of joke about Hos, as in a loose woman, it's been done, in fact, it's been done by at least three comedians getting through their first 5 minutes on stage with some local references (Wil Anderson, Adam Rozenbachs, and whoever the really crap guy supporting Peter Helliar at the casino was). So we KNOW there's a joke about Hos, it's been done. Chris Brown, does he like Hos? Anyway, not a lot of thought went into this workplace conflab, it was just the next radio station down on the dial. I don't know anything about the alternative choices apart from Triple J, which has seen better days. I think there's a Heart FM (the beat of our city, allegedly), but that might just been HOFM rebranded (and featured a really creepy ad in which a young girl appeared to grope the nipples of a fat old bloke under the guise of radio station spirit), there's an ULTRA FM, which is funded by religious groups and always hits me up for donations - and there might be a gay radio station somewhere, which would be good if they were pimping out one of their DJs. Brian Harradine would be narked.
Something really interesting is that in Hobart, they haven't done a radio ratings survey for about 5 or 6 years, so no one has any idea if a show is working or any accountability. I like to think ratings are pretty much based on one thing, and that is, the amount of free stuff the DJs get and the number of in store promotions they get. I can only speak for my few listens to Sea FM but their flagship DJs, the breakfast crew Kim and Dave, they always seem to be getting free stuff or doing something at K&D Hardware or Myer. By this standard, they'd be doing better in the ratings. I'm not sure that crank phone calls or Battle Of The Sexes is revolutionary radio, but it gets you a free drill when you want it. So I have no idea if making the switch to HOFM has seen us join Hobarts more popular radio station or become hipster bennies and outcasts. We really have no idea.
Radio stations really are like mix tapes your friends give you or one of those hot hits compilations Matt King used to talk about that back Nick Cave onto Girlfriend. The good thing about HOFM for what it's worth is, yes, they do play more different songs, although playing Brian McFadden twice in one day was really stretching friendships a lot. Just like the mix tapes of old, they really throw everything at the wall in weird sequencing (the Veronices into Robert Palmer for instance). However, what I really noted was it was not just an 80s throwback in the music, but an 80s throwback in the incredibly awkward stilted banter. Brilliantly, they had a phone in asking what TV show you'd like to see brought back to the screens - reasonably funny premise, in a sort of Sub Hamich and Andy way. But they couldn't run with it - someone would ring up and say "I'd love to bring back Sea Patrol" and the DJ would go "WOW! Yeah! Let's bring that back! That rocked!" and there'd be 20 seconds of silence, until the next caller rang in and said "Bring back It's a Knockout!" and the other woman DJ would go "YEAH! WOW! I loved that show!" and....you get the idea. It was pretty perfect for me as a new listener, because it was like an awkward first date with my new radio station. And I've been on those awkward first dates, and I think the conversation quality has been about the same. I probably even brought up It's a Knockout.
I just need to know their policy regarding pimping their DJs, and we might have a second date...
Love in the Club
So the most important thing that happened today at work wasn't that everyone is being nice to me, that the World Vision people were set up trying to get me to sponsor a second child, or that we changed the radio station because we were sick of listening to that "I Kissed a Girl" song (oh Katy Perry, will your wildness never cease). No, the most important thing that happened today was that someone I worked with had absolutely no idea who the Go-Gos were. I've come to realise I don't live in a very sophisticated crowd, so my love of Melissa Mars, $olal and Lykke Li aren't going to lead to many rich conversational avenues, but surely everyone knows who the Go-Gos are, don't they? If nothing else, they used to use Our Lips Are Sealed over the football scores on Channel 7 when it was time to turn away if you wanted to watch the replay without knowing who won (the other songs of course were "Secret", "Right On The Tip Of My Tongue" and that one about getting rattled). The problem with that is that just makes me think of Sandy Roberts, and lets not go there.
OK, so people don't know who the Go-Gos are, but thinking about it and just thinking of the last CD I bought, a compilation from the Moshi Moshi singles club, did make me think of where exactly in Hobart the trendy people go to hang out. Don't think for a second that I'm saying that I'm in any way trendy. God forbid, I'm sitting in a hooded Glasgow Celtic top and tracksuit trousers looking at a Collingwood Premiership posters. Plus, I'm an old man. However, I am quite trendy in my music tastes, and I can write my love of Hannah Montana and Britney Spears to irony. However, I'm completely unaware of anywhere with genuine trendy credentials that people go to in Hobart to hang out and discuss $olal and not Powderfinger. Obviously I wouldn't be invited, but I haven't even heard about the place in whispers. Is it the Observatory, with it's incredibly strict dress policy? Is it the Telegraph, with it's couches and pool tables and underage drinkers trying to outrun the police? Does Central Bar shut it's doors at 9pm and let in people who know a password to drink Cognac at 10 dollars a glass? Is it Bar-Cel-Ona, with it's hilarious Liberal facade? It's something that's really made me think all day - I've been thrown out of some of the biggest dives in Hobart for minor crimes, but I'm completely stumped having lived in this city for over a decade where I am supposed to go and drink if I win the lottery and join the Liberal party.
The other thing thats really made me wonder about this is that I read about a bar called Ssh in Sydney. This is a club that you have to get an SMS super secret password to get into, and basically know a friend of a friend of a friend of your hairdresser to even be allowed to mention in conversation. And when you get in there, it's like $10 a Boags draught, and you sit in a warehouse with cuddly wallpaper on milk crates while next door there's a pumping nightclub playing Hannah Montana and Dave Dobbyn which you can get into for five bucks. Which by definition is a lot better than our own Syrup, because you won't get a punch in the head. Now, if I'm sitting on a milk crate paying $10 bucks a beer discussing Focaut or Jung (and they want to give these people a 2nd AFL club?), I'm not having a great time, and it's probably because I'd feel under real pressure to enjoy myself. What if after all that effort, it's completely rubbish in there? Frankly there's only two ways ending up at Ssh could be a good night - you pick up, or you see someone famous. It's the only way a night at such a place sitting on a milkcrate can possibly be a good night. If you pick up a celebrity (why hello Emma George) all the better.
I think that's why places like this would die completely in Hobart - firstly, we only have about 4 celebrities, most of them cricketers, and they are down at Irish (vomit ban and all) with the rest of us. Secondly, it's a lot of effort to pick up just to sit on a milk crate chatting up a girl talking about Jung, when there's a Syrup down the road where you can impress girls twirling on a pole, which is much easier and less hassle (apart from the punch in the head from the bouncers). I know for a fact the only genuinely famous person I've ever seen in a Hobart nightclub was the coach of Fremantle Mark Harvey, and that was about it. My cousin saw Brett Lee pash a 16 year old (allegedly) at Isobar but does that even count? I have (don't tell anyone) been in trendy nightclubs in London and seen my friends go ape over Eastenders actors, but really, you go into these places and just look at people behind a velvet rope or find every table is reserved. It just doesn't happen in Tasmania - and down here, when it comes to beer, it's quantity, not quality...
So where do the trendy people go in Hobart? Home, at 9pm, to do drugs off the coffee table and mock the unfashionable I'd imagine. The rest of us, we've got the city to ourselves. Some nights, that really is all we ask. That, and a nice Dave Dobbyn tune...
OK, so people don't know who the Go-Gos are, but thinking about it and just thinking of the last CD I bought, a compilation from the Moshi Moshi singles club, did make me think of where exactly in Hobart the trendy people go to hang out. Don't think for a second that I'm saying that I'm in any way trendy. God forbid, I'm sitting in a hooded Glasgow Celtic top and tracksuit trousers looking at a Collingwood Premiership posters. Plus, I'm an old man. However, I am quite trendy in my music tastes, and I can write my love of Hannah Montana and Britney Spears to irony. However, I'm completely unaware of anywhere with genuine trendy credentials that people go to in Hobart to hang out and discuss $olal and not Powderfinger. Obviously I wouldn't be invited, but I haven't even heard about the place in whispers. Is it the Observatory, with it's incredibly strict dress policy? Is it the Telegraph, with it's couches and pool tables and underage drinkers trying to outrun the police? Does Central Bar shut it's doors at 9pm and let in people who know a password to drink Cognac at 10 dollars a glass? Is it Bar-Cel-Ona, with it's hilarious Liberal facade? It's something that's really made me think all day - I've been thrown out of some of the biggest dives in Hobart for minor crimes, but I'm completely stumped having lived in this city for over a decade where I am supposed to go and drink if I win the lottery and join the Liberal party.
The other thing thats really made me wonder about this is that I read about a bar called Ssh in Sydney. This is a club that you have to get an SMS super secret password to get into, and basically know a friend of a friend of a friend of your hairdresser to even be allowed to mention in conversation. And when you get in there, it's like $10 a Boags draught, and you sit in a warehouse with cuddly wallpaper on milk crates while next door there's a pumping nightclub playing Hannah Montana and Dave Dobbyn which you can get into for five bucks. Which by definition is a lot better than our own Syrup, because you won't get a punch in the head. Now, if I'm sitting on a milk crate paying $10 bucks a beer discussing Focaut or Jung (and they want to give these people a 2nd AFL club?), I'm not having a great time, and it's probably because I'd feel under real pressure to enjoy myself. What if after all that effort, it's completely rubbish in there? Frankly there's only two ways ending up at Ssh could be a good night - you pick up, or you see someone famous. It's the only way a night at such a place sitting on a milkcrate can possibly be a good night. If you pick up a celebrity (why hello Emma George) all the better.
I think that's why places like this would die completely in Hobart - firstly, we only have about 4 celebrities, most of them cricketers, and they are down at Irish (vomit ban and all) with the rest of us. Secondly, it's a lot of effort to pick up just to sit on a milk crate chatting up a girl talking about Jung, when there's a Syrup down the road where you can impress girls twirling on a pole, which is much easier and less hassle (apart from the punch in the head from the bouncers). I know for a fact the only genuinely famous person I've ever seen in a Hobart nightclub was the coach of Fremantle Mark Harvey, and that was about it. My cousin saw Brett Lee pash a 16 year old (allegedly) at Isobar but does that even count? I have (don't tell anyone) been in trendy nightclubs in London and seen my friends go ape over Eastenders actors, but really, you go into these places and just look at people behind a velvet rope or find every table is reserved. It just doesn't happen in Tasmania - and down here, when it comes to beer, it's quantity, not quality...
So where do the trendy people go in Hobart? Home, at 9pm, to do drugs off the coffee table and mock the unfashionable I'd imagine. The rest of us, we've got the city to ourselves. Some nights, that really is all we ask. That, and a nice Dave Dobbyn tune...
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Tough Enough
Thinking for most of the day about the girls that used to play basketball in Penguin made me think that most of them could have beaten me up good and proper, and how that probably makes me look. Most Tasmanian culture is built around manliness and dissing of bitches (sigh), especially on the North West Coast. Not so much in Hobart, because we have North Hobart and Sandy Bay surrounding the city like a pincer movement of alternative lifestyles, much to the chagrin of the meat eating, beer drinking, football loving real man. North Hobart is where the hippies hang out - I'm not sure if I posted before about The Republic Bar, a hotbed of left wing intellectual debate, Pale Ale and Tim Rogers gigs. I think the Republic Bar was once the King Edward - when I first moved to Hobart, I walked past a gun fight outside it, and it had topless barmaid Wednesday. Quite the clientele change. Sandy Bay is where the university is, although it does have the last mom and pop video shop left in Tasmania (for about another week, until it closes) and a bar called something like the Marquess or something which seems like a big warehouse of weirdness and hormones. And Pale Ale. The Metz in Sandy Bay has an outdoor deck, which really isn't something I can imagine appealing to the hardened wizened woman hating real male. And in the middle, where I go out, is Hobart, which has the Mens Gallery. Enough said. And it has a ban on people vomiting, because it's girly. And one of the bars used to have Coyote Ugly Thursday. I guess that's the centre of Southern Tasmanian manliness. But it still seems girly by North West standards.
So I got to thinking whether or not by basic North West coast standards, I was, quote, a real man. The big things in my favour are that I like beer, and football. I have a lot of incredibly ill informed and hopelessly weak held under the light theories about football that I bore everyone with. I'd find it quite interesting to see if I could hold my own against, say, a Mick Malthouse, in a real coaching box at AFL level, but I am still convinced I'm better than him - after all, I'd never have recruited Andrew Williams. Like I said, I like beer - although to be honest, I prefer rum, but it's not really an option on the North West Coast. There are only two rules in pubs in Penguin - only order a beer, and don't beat the locals at pool. And don't be an ethnic, obviously. And, I did play football, although at an Under 8 standard, which was fine since it was in the Under 8s. I'm not sure that I hate ethnic minorities, but I know being Scottish I have to by law hate the English, so that's something. Just finally, I'm completely afraid of revealing any of my emotions to anyone...ever. Oh, and I just remembered, when I watch womens tennis, I just support whoever is the most attractive. So, basically, this is all good stuff so far.
However, there are many problems. Firstly, I'm terrible at pool, although in doubles I am good at setting up snookers. My main problem is my music taste - I love the first Britney Spears album. I think it's a fantastic, fantastic pop album, especially the first 5 tracks. So you can see my dilemma, I can't really go into a North West Coast pub and put this in. I did put Toxic on once at the Welcome Stranger in Hobart (more on that place later) and some Maoris threatened to beat up whoever put it on with pool cues. Phillistines. I know nothing about horse racing at all, and I'm not really interested in learning. I'm accutely aware of when I'm boring people, which is something that very few people on the North West Coast seem to grasp. I don't like dirty jokes, and the real kicker is, I absolutely hate strip clubs. Really hate them. I did, for my sins, go into Hobarts Men Gallery once, and I found it absolutely depressing. There was just row after row of stunned, bewildered males sitting like deers in the headlights, and strippers who just hated them. Now, I'm not one to judge, I read some of my old posts and I seem a little stalkerish at times (hello girl with the blue eye shadow) but if you turn up at a strip club with chocolates or flowers, it's time to pack the tent up on your life.
Plus, not one of the strippers looked like Leilani Kai, lousy kids...
The point is that I'm not really cut out for North West coast pubs anymore, or even the Black Buffalo hotel - I'm just not really blokey enough. I had hoped that one day, I'd retire, be able to refer to the female barmaids as sweetheart or luv, and drink beer until my liver exploded. The Australian dream. But it's just not working out...I might need a new retirement plan...maybe I could take up basketball...
So I got to thinking whether or not by basic North West coast standards, I was, quote, a real man. The big things in my favour are that I like beer, and football. I have a lot of incredibly ill informed and hopelessly weak held under the light theories about football that I bore everyone with. I'd find it quite interesting to see if I could hold my own against, say, a Mick Malthouse, in a real coaching box at AFL level, but I am still convinced I'm better than him - after all, I'd never have recruited Andrew Williams. Like I said, I like beer - although to be honest, I prefer rum, but it's not really an option on the North West Coast. There are only two rules in pubs in Penguin - only order a beer, and don't beat the locals at pool. And don't be an ethnic, obviously. And, I did play football, although at an Under 8 standard, which was fine since it was in the Under 8s. I'm not sure that I hate ethnic minorities, but I know being Scottish I have to by law hate the English, so that's something. Just finally, I'm completely afraid of revealing any of my emotions to anyone...ever. Oh, and I just remembered, when I watch womens tennis, I just support whoever is the most attractive. So, basically, this is all good stuff so far.
However, there are many problems. Firstly, I'm terrible at pool, although in doubles I am good at setting up snookers. My main problem is my music taste - I love the first Britney Spears album. I think it's a fantastic, fantastic pop album, especially the first 5 tracks. So you can see my dilemma, I can't really go into a North West Coast pub and put this in. I did put Toxic on once at the Welcome Stranger in Hobart (more on that place later) and some Maoris threatened to beat up whoever put it on with pool cues. Phillistines. I know nothing about horse racing at all, and I'm not really interested in learning. I'm accutely aware of when I'm boring people, which is something that very few people on the North West Coast seem to grasp. I don't like dirty jokes, and the real kicker is, I absolutely hate strip clubs. Really hate them. I did, for my sins, go into Hobarts Men Gallery once, and I found it absolutely depressing. There was just row after row of stunned, bewildered males sitting like deers in the headlights, and strippers who just hated them. Now, I'm not one to judge, I read some of my old posts and I seem a little stalkerish at times (hello girl with the blue eye shadow) but if you turn up at a strip club with chocolates or flowers, it's time to pack the tent up on your life.
Plus, not one of the strippers looked like Leilani Kai, lousy kids...
The point is that I'm not really cut out for North West coast pubs anymore, or even the Black Buffalo hotel - I'm just not really blokey enough. I had hoped that one day, I'd retire, be able to refer to the female barmaids as sweetheart or luv, and drink beer until my liver exploded. The Australian dream. But it's just not working out...I might need a new retirement plan...maybe I could take up basketball...
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