Tasmania believes, through the power of choc

I've spent most of the day absolutely on edge, mostly because firstly I had a really weird dream that I was drafted to the Gold Coast AFL team and ended up with Cheryl Haworth as a celebrity girlfriend (which was fine, the problem was the team was coached by Mick Malthouse), and then the first thing I saw on the news was a man had his head cut off on a bus (there but for the grace of Metro), then I found out Jess Veronica was involved in some kind of weird porn thing (I thought they were such nice girls) and then for some reason I read that there would never be another Mars Bar on sale ever again in Tasmania. I'd stopped eating Mars Bars about 15 years ago, but the thought that I wasn't allowed to eat another one was a bit harsh, it's like denying Anne Maree Cooksley a glass of champagne at a film premiere. However, salvation was at hand - you could still get Mars Bars, thank God for that, however, by Government decree, they wouldn't be called Mars Bars. The wrapper would look like a Mars Bar, the taste would be that of a Mars Bar, but in an L Ron Hubbard style twist, the product would be called the "Believe Bar" - straight out of Scientology, this mysterious chocolate product would now implore us to believe, to have faith, and in my case go back to sleep and think about my wedding to Cheryl Haworth...

Don't worry though Mars Bar fans, it's all part of a plan - to get a Tasmanian team into the AFL, Mars Bar are tipping 4 million bucks into our campaign and renaming the Mars Bar the Believe bar to make us all believe in the bid. There's an SMS code on the wapper, and you can SMS someone (not Andrew Demetriou, he hates us, he disrespects us, he loathes us etc) and somehow if kids eat a lot of chocolate, this will work and we'll get a football team in the AFL. I love the fact that fat kids can help us get an elite team of athletes down here. They've come up with a jumper, and we'll almost certainly at some point drag Alistair Lynch in to hold up a bunch of Believe Bars in the paper soon. I'd like to think that Tasmanians are too media savvy to think of this as anything but a nice gesture, albeit quite a lame one, but already I heard two girls in a certain shop where a certain girl with blue eye shadow works (she was looking fine today) talking excitedly about it. They certainly believed. I wonder if I ate one, if I would believe Josh Fraser could be a ruckman. I know if I was at my school, the commercial sell out hot bed that it was, we'd have not only been deluged by the Believe Bar push, someone would have given us a talk, we'd have had to do a project on football (and Mars) and the prize for winning would be...more Mars Bars. I can see it clear as day - but as I said, good to see fat kids getting involved, I would have thought knowing Paula Wriedt (yes, THAT one Sam Newman) she'd have spent 4 million bucks on a salad based sponsor.

The problem is, these things never work. I'm glad Mars are on board trying to talk to the arrogant wall that is Andrew Demetriou, but seriously, mascots, gestures, campaigns, slogans, logos - never ever work. No matter what mascot the school dentist tried to get to us with, to get us to clean our teeth, we ignored it. You can get a slogan like "Not happy Jan" into the everyday conversation of bogans, but buggered if they know what it's advertising. Said bogans will buy a Believe bar, and never in a million years SMS the wrapper code. A chocolate bar isn't going to help us get a team, it's just a nice dream. My favourite ever mascot without a doubt was the infamous Scotticus, the Daily Record mascot for Scotland at the 1990 World Cup. I say infamous because some poor bugger had to dress up as him, and as far as I can remember, it was some poor bugger standing in an Ayshire field in a toga and a tartan bunnet. You'd think at the very least they'd give him a shell suit or a nice warm jumper. Kids were kicking him up the arse and trying to steal his toga. He was created by a cartoonist, and he was meant to fire up a nation and lead us to glory - we lost to Costa Rica in the first game, and no one ever saw him again. I like to think someone stole his bunnet, and he went in a huff. I can imagine in a few years, when Tassie still doesn't have an AFL team, I'll see a Believe bar wrapper in the gutter and think, oh yeah, I remember that...what was all that about? And shouldn't it be Believe! The ! makes it more, er, believable...

I had a much better idea than renaming the Mars Bar - bring back DMCs. Younger people don't remember the DMC, and to be honest, there are times I think I made them up - however, they were a pre M&M Cadbury prototype, M&Ms the size of a dinner plate. I've just seen an advert for the Chocolate Lovers ball at the casino in a couple of weeks -a change of pace for the casino in not holding singles balls where Sea FM DJs get casual sex set up for them - and the only way you could get me to go would be to tell me that DMCs were available in the foyer. No doubt it will be a well attended event, and, again, a fair night out for the gentleman who likes the larger lady (tying us back to Cheryl Haworth again). I would think that the Believe bar will have a stall at the chocolate lovers ball, although I was talking to a girlfriend of mine today, and she says that we're wasting our time with all this chocolate nonsense, all we need is Jess Veronica to, in her next nude shoot, discreetly wear a Tassie logo tattoo, and we'll get all the publicity we need. And besides, anyone who has attended a local football game surely knows it's the Cherry Ripe that's the chocolate bar of choice. Especially at Penguin, where they bought a job lot of 2350 palettes of Cherry Ripes in the 80s, and have been selling them ever since. Local football is also the last bastion of the Wagon Wheel, but that's an entirely different story.

It's back to the drawing board then Paula...and back to the wedding reception for me, Cheryl hates it when I'm late...

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...