Staying at Eddie McGuires house

So I've woken up this morning and been pretty grumpy because I'm sore and tired and I'm not sure what day of the week it is. I get disgruntled in the mornings if I get woken up with a start, and at no stage do I seem to recover and become gruntled again. In fact, as I write this, I'm sore all over, and only the quality of the Banjos (them again) sausage roll I've eaten for morning tea has perked me up. I was really annoyed to hear about the disco in New Zealand that was pumping out a bit of Bob The Builder for the kids and got shut down by neighbours complaining about the noise - I don't mind cranking up a bit of Can We Fix It when I'm feeling festive and ironic (I like my mums Scottish inspired creation, Shug The Shoveller, who's response to "Can We Fix It!" was a dis-interested "Nup"). I love the girl who lined up for ages to go and get Stephanie Rice and E-Sulls autographs only to be told they were only signing sponsors underpants. I love the fact she'd skipped dole day to go and draw E-Sull on her arm and got rejected. I'm all for this kind of devotion - I still feel the sting of rejection when my Dad wouldn't let me cross the road to go and get Chris Reynolds autograph after the 1987 NTFL Premiership win by Penguin, and can still remember looking over at the football ground and seeing the massive bonfire lighting up the night sky and feeling a little piqued that I couldn't just go and have a schooner or two. Mind you, I hadn't drawn Chris Reynolds on my arm, that would have got me in the paper. And the way I draw, it would either have been a stick figure or something that looked like a pig - I painted a spaceship in art class when I was little and turned it into a hippo, it was the only A I ever got until a hippy Grade 8 art teacher said one of my paintings was a violent explosion of colour, which it was cos I cracked it and threw all the paint at the canvas, Angry Homer style. And I'm completely sure that my parents are planning something really terrible for my 30th. I hope it's not a Veronica pretending to be a lesbian, that's the worst gift I could get...

So my Mum, she has this little joke she's started telling me where she goes "Remember when we were in Melbourne and we stayed with Eddie McGuire?" - furreners, if you don't know, Eddie McGuire is an Australian television personality, and the president of my football club, and let's just say opinions on him are mixed and leave it politely at that - and she's absolutely right, when I was 10, we stayed at Eddie McGuires house, the joke of course being the Eddie McGuire we stayed was a nonogenerian Scottish gentlemen with a wife called Bessie who in that true kids fashion, I have no idea how we knew them, and I certainly don't think I ever saw them again. However, for three days in 1988 (the year before the release of Cop and A Half with Burt Reynolds), I did indeed stay with Eddie McGuire...um...that's it...that's posted...goodnight everybody. Well, not really, because there was more to it than that. You see, this was our stop over in Melbourne before I left Penguin to go back and live in Scotland, and it had not been a good week. I had a terrific farewell, beating this school we really hated 2-1 in soccer, and I kicked this red headed kid I hated fair in the guts, but I still had to leave Penguin behind, especially when we sat in our empty house and I had the time to look at my signed Bicentennial medal. And my friends. And my (admittedly now a lot more corporate) swimming pool. And Swanny, my hairdresser who slashed my ear...OK, I wasn't sad to miss him. Well, I kinda was, he had some awesome musk sticks. Anyway, I was in this wooden strangers room in some suburb of Melbourne where everything was my favourite kind of pine (who doesn't love treated pine, anyone?) and I always remember he came in and gave this little yellow book about soccer, and it was really nice of him to do that, and he'd written this lovely inscription in it about Scotland and stuff...my parents meanwhile did the bulk of the heavy lifting when it came to being sociable, sitting through a four hour VHS tape of their ballroom dancing which had it involved some Paul Licuria Dancing With The Stars style funkadelia might have been impressive, but which in fact was a room full of dancers shuffing awkwardly to the Pride Of Erin Brockovich or whatever they do in those situations. Well, it was four hours now I think about it start to finish, if you take out the times Eddie paused it to show Big Willie and his incredible much talked about shuffling, only to start the tape again and commentate on a seemingly indistinguishable old man clomping around the scout hall - I guess we just didn't have a trained eye. We also went to dinner at someones house and someone let a cockatoo out that clamped onto everyones head (I'm sure it was trained) in a seemingly pre-determined order. Again, I found something else to do while my parents did the Haworth style lifting in the social world - I found an ATARI in one of the kids rooms and sat down and played Super Slalom until hometime. I think that's always been my state of mind, it seems quite solitary and abstract at times, the classic mindset of the only child, and not even a flying cockatoo trained to peck at crusty bread and say "beer" can lure me into social situations with strangers at times.

The centrepiece of our trip was an outing to a VFL game between my team, the Pies In The Sky and the North Melbourne Bob Ansett owned Kangaroos. I've exaggerated so many aspects of this day in my own mind - we didn't win by 132 points, but by about 50, it wasn't bucketing with rain, just a bit muddy, and it wasn't at the MCG or a final, it was Waverley Park and no one was there, or anything else I associate with this day. I do remember being completely struck by the sheer size of Melbourne though, as we walked along the streets in variable weather. Mostly, I remember it was the first place I ever saw a caramel Milky Way, just sitting in the shop in a brown wrapper like a long lost girlfriend with a fantastic new hairstyle. Caramel? In a Milky Way? What is going on...and at the ground there wasn't just brassy old Di saying lewd things to kids like "I'll give him a lesson when he's older" and selling Violet Crumbles at marked up prices like in Penguin, there were vans selling kebabs and salad sandwiches and Halls Lemonade that wasn't even out of date...less impressively, it was also the first place I ever saw Home and Away, the episode where Nico turns the hose on Frank because he's not in the wedding party, and I was totally hooked, in a way I wouldn't be with Home and Away again until the Thomsen/Godbold era. So we're walking along to the game and Eddie suddenly realises he's left his banana at home. That's banana, single, not even a packed lunch with a Rice Bubbles bar in it, just one banana, and he decides we have to go and get it, because it's his banana, and one from the shops just wouldn't be prepared right. What can you do? Turn the hose on him? So we walked all the way home just to get Eddies banana, then all the way back, and missed a good chunk of the first 1/4 (in my version we missed most of the game and arrived with 5 minutes to go and got in for free). My Dad is still pretty annoyed at this, and brings it up whenever we're stuck in traffic mentioning someone must have gone back for a banana. I can never exaggerate that my first ever VFL game involved just a lot of angry emotions - I was angry because we didn't have time to look at merch, Eddie was angry he didn't have his banana, Dad was angry because he didn't get to see the start of the game, Nico was angry he wasn't in the wedding party, and the woman in the row in front of me was the angriest person of all - she was head of a family of 6 North Melbourne supporters sitting in a row with one kid sitting in the middle of the family in a Collingwood beanie, smiling all day long. At the end of the game, the Mum just turned to the kid and said "If you say one word you are fucking dead", to which the kid simply froze in fear. If only he'd gone home for his banana...

I don't really remember Bessie, I don't know what she did - obviously apart from the ball room dancing, we got a fair idea of her abilities in that regard. Maybe she was the brains of the outfit, or maybe she just hated us. When it comes to Eddie, well, my favourite ever line of rap music (is that a correctly constructed opening?) is on Jay Zs the Black Tape where he raps on the subject of what happens when a rapper tries to deliver a message and fails to connect that he's, quote, "Just talkin to ya...(sigh)...just talking through ya"...I really love that line because Jay Z has been talking through me for years, and I can't remember the last time anything Jay Z said connected with me ("stack chips in anticipation of precipitation on a rainy day" indeed), but it always makes me think of Eddie. I always felt I was talking through him in our brief conversations, that whatever I was showing him wasn't really registering, that he was of an age and from a time of strict train timetable like routines, only eating bananas after 12 and never drinking juice before 2, before a bit of Willisee at night and some toast with crusts cut off at 6:42 and ball room dancing at 7:31. Whatever I was saying to him (and most of it was nonsense, about the decline of Transformers or Empty Nest or...actually, I just realised I'm still the same) just bounced off him and struggled to get through a fog of routine and muddling. Look Eddie, it's time for Lost Cities Of Gold, want to...no, it's 4:37, you've got gardening to do, cheers bud. Everything was set up, there was no spontaniety or deviation at all, just treated pine and elevenses, ballroom dancing and routine. But it made him happy, and I wasn't going to argue with that, he'd earned the right to live the way he chose, and he chose to live his life in set order. For all that though, he gave me something really kind and heartfelt, and I did keep the soccer book for ages, referring to it whenever I wanted to check out something soccer related on the history of the European Championships or just wanted to remember someone doing something really decent for a kid he didn't know. I'll always really appreciate that.

Oh yeah, Bessie had a thing for antique pigs...never did find out what that was about...

The Death Of The Devils Part 1

SuzyQ
Originally uploaded by JungsPN

So it was a bad night for one of my favourites, Suzy Batkovic, she of the hypnotically bouncing bosom, as apparently she was single handedly responsible for our flogging at the basketball (according to Fox). Pretty rough I'd have thought, I blame Lauren Jackson personally, I've never liked her at all. Worringly, I got the picture from a website which seemed fetishly obsessed with tall women, but what the hell, a pics a pic isn't it, although I'm suddenly thinking what happened to my fetishes? Should I have one? Everyone else seems to. I missed the Pies In The Sky as well, because I was drinking at, you guessed it, Syrup. I watched the replay this morning, lying on the floor eating a pancake and hurting a little bit, but it was good to see the boys having a crack. I didn't get a punch in the mouth this time, which is good. I don't know whether it was me, but I had quite a poetic drunken ennui to the whole Syrup scene - it seemed amazingly dead last night, not even Dave Dobbyn got a spin. I was a little drunk, and I'm probably over that a bit, I should drink a bit less and go home a bit earlier. I'm nearly 30 and a bit over stumbling home and watching episodes of the Simpsons on the floor. It's all getting a bit shambolic. Although, brilliantly, it wasn't my fault for once that we didn't get into places - Temuera Morrison on the door at the Telegraph said it was someone elses fault we couldn't get in, then we couldn't get into somewhere else because Jay La'gaia said no. We ended up in Liberal party stronghold Bar-Cel-ona talking to someone about Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton. Naturally, being Bar-Cel-Ona, we were thrown into a holding cell and re-educated until we only talked about John McCain...the Andrew Bolt wing I think it's called.

It might seem harsh to segue talking about shambles to talking about The Devils, our dying on the vine VFL football team, but I did at least go and see them (and kudos to the bewildered bloke in the Collingwood hat who found it funny I couldn't find Bellerive Oval) have a dip in their second last ever game (if you missed it, the Devils are being disbanded so Tassie can have a statewide league, which is just the stupidest idea - although I say bring back East Launceston!) before being robbed by the umpires. There was no one there, I guess we're down to the diehards, some little kids calling North Ballarat shitheads, someone making a Roosters/Cocks joke (OK that was me), some girls trying to pick up, and people having a lovely chat in that 1992 St Mirren we've been relegated and we're losing again so we might as well have a chat because there's nothing else to do and the game is awful kind of way. What I hadn't heard was our incredibly god awful theme song. I think when you set up a football team, the song (a staple of Aussie Rules clubs is the club song the players sing after they win, if you didn't know) is more important than the name, the jumper or recruiting. In our case at Collingwood, saying the Premierships a cakewalk when you've lost 26 Grand Finals is pushing it, but the Tassie theme song is so bad, I think Scott Wade wrote it himself just to make us fail to be inspired. It's an adaptation of the Richmond song, We're From Tigerland, the best AFL song of all time, but it's watered down, stripped of all passion, and sounds like an N-Trance remix. The best bit of the Richmond version is the bit that goes We're from Tiger (YELLOW AND BLACK!), we're from Tigerland, but in our case, it goes, We're from Tas-man-green yellow and black-tas-man-ia, and it just makes everyone feel embarrassed. Tasmanians might remember a few years ago our cricket team had a crack at a we're from Tigerland ad campaign, given they are the Tigers, which involved all round colourful character (ie. tool) Mark Ridgeway playing some air guitar with a cricket stump. Not since David Boon drove around Kate Langbroek in that Trust Bank ad has a cricketer so embarrassed themselves in a Tasmanian advert...no wonder we keep losing, with such an uninspiring song. Even if we'd run on to Powderfinger we'd have been more pumped...

For any tourists out there, a trip to Bellerive wouldn't be complete without a visit to the wonderful clay or bronze or whatever the hell it is statute of Boonie though, sadly which doesn't seem to be a posed tribute to the time he got nine stitches in his chin without anaesthetic, his semi legendary drinking contest with Danny Buckingham, or his Trust Bank ad with Kate Langbroek (on the level...gold). The great thing about the statue of course (and this applies to about 50% of all statues) is it looks nothing like him. When I was growing up, everyone referred to Boonie as "chunky", but his statue gives him the hip and bone structure of Objection (Tango) era Shakira. I would also suggest going to see a game at Bellerive when no one is there, as it's terrific fun - how many security guards can guard 6 people in the Wet Area? Three? Four? Will one of them get really close to belting a kid for kicking the footy in a non designated area? Will you be accosted to buy raffle tickets by a clearly bored model/actress or an enthusiastic 15 year old boy? And who will sell more tickets? What will amuse you more - the wit and wisdom of a drunk bloke in the crowd or the fat kid kicking the footy on the ground? Will we get an aerobics display at half time or someone driving remote control cars around the boundary line? Will you see a Tasmanian identity - maybe Dave Noonan! The glamour! Will you take advantage of Bellerives malfunctioning online betting system? Will someone have got in for free that you know, while you had to pay, and how does that happen? Will the man on the ticket booth be 80 or over? And most importantly - will you get beer? Well, you'll get beer, but will you get full strength or that disgusting horrible light beer they serve at random games? Why can you drink yourself stupid at an international game full of dickhead but only light beer at some VFL games when there's roughly 3 people there? If you are a tourist, and wish to come up with a Lonely Planet style guide to Bellerive, the area and the ground, there's so much material even I don't know where to start...

But back to the Devils - and sadly, I didn't follow through with my threat to heckle Scott Wade or make a "We're Wadeing into mediocrity" banner - and as I sat in my little plastic bucket seat looking at the seat next to me with the big giant crack in it and talked about, well, East Launceston, I couldn't help but think that unless we get an AFL side down here, football down here will die. The number of people who care about their local team falls every single year - the Devils really were our best chance of getting a side up and running that people would care about, and to kill them off to try and get people in Burnie to worry about a game against Lauderdale is just insane. Far more people care about Nick Maxwell than North Hobart, but there was something that Scott Wade said that annoyed me, when he made a sneery comment about "social footy clubs" - the only place left that has football teams people care about are small towns with a hundred years of tradition who put a team out every week even though times are tough, and no one is buying tickets to the meat-tray raffle, and yes, at times they are social footy clubs playing at a pretty scrappy level, but that's not a bad thing is it? I think the biggest problem for The Devils though was that the players never became part of the community, and they never had a social club. Had we seen them more, maybe if they've sold more raffle tickets, maybe had a meat tray sale or too, and yes, been more of a social footy club, we'd have loved them more - but Luke Shackleton is at full forward, and no one knew who he was (except me, cos he was a Collingwood player) and I couldn't help but think of all those local instore promotions Puffing Billy Fielding did in Penguin, and how many times he was in the paper on this tractor, while Luke Shackleton, he's never been in the window of a local Myer and Cameron Thurley has never done a Jordan Lewis style local car ad...but that's probably because they aren't AFL players, can't compete with Russell Robertson and his guitar, and it's a circle we could never complete. However, what is stupid is that players as good as Thurley won't be playing down here anymore (Thurley won't be going to City South), and I guess my long held Tote bet that Brodie Holland would coach us and we'd see Sarite biting someones nipple outside Isobar is lost. Anyway, the game, the club, did matter to someone...I realised after a while the crack in the seat was caused by a footprint, from one disgruntled Devils supporter...

Or maybe he just heard how badly Suzy Batkovic played last night...