Perspectives

From the always entertaining Peter Roebuck, in The Age on Tuesday:

"Symonds also bowled his off breaks tidily, at any rate until he started to toss the ball up in an attempt to buy a wicket. His shoulder action has improved and he made the batsmen work hard for runs. The Queenslander also prowled the cover region in the manner of a leopard informed that the Nutrigrain had run out."

No, that is not, as far as I know, a typo.

He actually wrote "in the manner of a leopard informed that the Nutrigrain had run out."

He really truly did.

Yes, we could engage in probing enquiries as to whether this issue is a major concern for the average Leopard. We could wonder why a Leopard who felt a pressing need for overly sugary breakfast cereal would be hanging around the covers at the Sydney Cricket Ground rather than, say, the nearest IGA. We could certain ask Peter Roebuck exactly how he knows what a big spotty cat bereft of sufficient quantities of Corn Oats and Wheat in the form of Iron Man Food would look like, exactly.

But of course we are not going to raise such trivial issues when this is clearly the finest piece of sporting journalism since Jane Kennedy interviewed Paul Maley and his wife the day after Paul Maley said winning a basketball grand final with the North Melbourne Giants was better than sex.

More importantly, I am going to remind myself daily that no matter how bad things get at work, at least I am not the guy whose job it is to inform the Leopard that we have run out of Nutri-Grain.

Finally, understanding dawns

I have recently worked out that my main, and possibly sole, motivation for losing weight is that if I can get rid of around 5kg, then I won't have to keep watching what I eat all the damn time.

Possibly this explains, in some small way, where I have been going wrong with the whole 'lose weight and keep it off' thing.

Just in one of those moods, y'know?

Dear Management of MMM

Yes, I know this has already been commented on,but I just started reading Tony Martin's Lolly Scramble and so I have to ask you a simple question.

How much crack did you people smoke before you decvided to axe "Get This"?

Also, did you move on to some particularly potent crystal meth before you decided to explain your reasoning?

Here's where I'm confused. Your rationale was, apparently, that you wanted to divert resources to your new breakfast show, apparently starring Peter Helliar and Myf Warhurst.

They are replacing "The Cage". Presumably the five members of that particular 'morning crew' were not working for free. Myf is coming to you from Triple J where she is used to working for the type of salary that causes those guys washing windscreens at traffic lights to mock you. Offer Myf whatever Duclos was on, I'm sure she'll take it, despite being a billion times better at what she does.

And then we have Peter Helliar. Listen carefully: THIS MAN IS NOT FUNNY. He never has been. He never will be. If you are paying him four times as much as the average Cage wage, you are not getting value. Around half of what Pete Berner currently earns would seem to be a reasonable starting point.

So, given that your salary costs for the breakfast shift will now be aqround 70% lower than they were, you could actually give the Get This team more money, which seems sensible since they rate well and they are actually funny, and you would still break even.

If the actual issue is that you wanted to play more music during the day, did it even ocur to you clowns that, speaking of keeping costs down, you could have at least offerred 'Get This' the breakfast shift? Or was working out the daily schedule just too difficult because all the clocks kept melting? I hear those invisible ninjas can be terribly distracting also.

Despite all this, you continue to find ways to give Jason Dunstall more airtime. What did Andrew Gaze do to upset you? Exactly?

If you want me to never listen to your radio station again, wouldn't it have been simpler just to send me an email?

Yours most sincerely,

INC

Well he nervously shakes while we rattle his stage

I hope you all enjoyed the election debate as much as I did. Actually, I hope you enjoyed it more, since after the first hour I decided I really needed to buy some puffed corn for the boys breakfast and, thanks to Coles' talent for hiding said item, I missed the end entirely.

I have it on video but whether I will ever get around to watching it is anyone's guess.

From what I saw, I thought young Kev was not particularly inspiring but he did rather better than John "I've never won one of these things so why would I start now" Howard, who just seemed cross about being there, and looked less and less comfortable as things progressed. And his attempts to avoid answering questions on Iraq were particularly entertaining.

It was good to see Kev havinga good night after what was, according to the media, a terrible first week for Labor. A bad opinion poll (it takes a special kind of journalism to report a 54-46 lead as 'bad' for anyone other than the guy who is on 46) an apparently politically brilliant tax package that caught Labor 'flat footed' because they failed, not having teh resources of government, to release their own package the same day, and a general sense that now the campaign had started, the momentum was swinging back to our politically masterful government and it was going to be 2004 all over again.

I realise I'm not the first to comment on the apparent dissonance between the campaign as reported and this week's Newspoll, taken before the Great Debate, showing that following this disasterous week for Labor, their lead had increased and it was now 58-42.

Despite the fact that every political commentator has mentioned this already, I'm going to join in because it just makes me incredibly happy.

I've said it before, I'll say it again:

And may the best moves win, rodent boy.

Warning: pun ahead

An old friend, who I have not seen in years, recently got hold of my email address. Ever since, he has been sending me endless emailed invitations to see his new band. These are clearly emails that are sent to everyone else on his email address list too.



As far as I know, no-one has yet come up with a name for this practice of marketing things to friends through annoying mass emails.



But there is an obvious one.



So, with apologies to anyone who has already thought of this and used it and can't believe I'm trying to pass it off as original, and indeed with apologies to anyone who hates puns and therefore apparently has never read this blog before and didn't take the warning at the top seriously...

Here it is:

SPAMWAY











On reflection, I'm going to just make that a general apology to anyone who has ever read or will ever read this.

GREATEST GAME EVER EVER EVER

And also the most satisfying thing that you could possibly use your computer for.

Click HERE, right now.

That is all.

And so it begins...

Yes folks, this is how far I am willing to go to see the back of this government. I have been wearing, in public, this:

Hint of chest hair entirely blogger's own.

The happy news is that, despite the debacle that we like to call 'last week', yesterday's Newspoll showed a small increase in Kevin's disapproval rating, an even small drop in his approval rating, and absolutely no change in Labor's primary vote, its two party preferred vote, or the gap between the leaders on the preferred PM scale.

We got ourselves a game right here, folks.

As Kirsten Dunst is so fond of saying, BRING IT ON.

This is another fine mess you've gotten us into, young man

So, the week in politics so far looks something like this:

1. Kevin Rudd is furious with Robert McLelland for stating the official Labor Party policy in a speech approved by Kevin Rudd's office.

2. John Howard is furious with Robert McLelland for stating the official Labor party policy in that speech too.

3. John Howard is also furious with Kevin Rudd for not supporting the policy that Howard is furious about, even though they both used almost exactly the same words when criticising it.

4. Alexander Downer is furious with Kevin Rudd for agreeing with Alexander Downer's leader instead of Alexander Downer's direct opponent.

5. Robert McLelland is probably quietly furious with Kevin Rudd but so far he's been pretty quiet about it, even though, frankly, no one could seriously blame him.

Kevin, Kevin, Kevin.

Yes, the polls have been looking good for a while now. Yes, you want to avoid trouble as far as possible. And yes, talking in the vaguest terms possible and indeed never actually saying anything worked a treat for the other guy 11 years ago.

But. Dude. Seriously.

Please consider this.

Recent polls show that no-one actually believes that you will manage the economy better than the other lot. As this seems to be pretty much all that most people care about anymore, that could be a problem.

85% of people believe that coconut boy can run the economy better than you, or that which side is in power will make no difference. The same poll showed that the other 15% of people were kidding around. So, why would the most ridiculously afraid of change electorate in the world vote for you unless there is some actual reason to do so?

Did you learn nothing from the Republic Referendum (which historians will describe as the only time a monarch has successfully run for election)? Why were the public persuaded to vote for the Queen? Well, Malcolm Turnbull's efforts to get people excited about the repulic worked about as well as his recent efforts to persuade us that Mills are Good. The collective response sounded a lot like a world record 'meh' attempt.

On the other hand, it was suggested that this move was in some way vaguely risky. And from there, something that most people previously thought was a good idea was deader than dead can be.

This week, Robert McLelland finally said something inspiring and courageous on the issue of the death penalty. Your response was to talk smack about timing and sensitivity whilst running for the Redneck Hills as fast as your stumpy little legs would carry you.

In addition to stating the same policy that you stated when you had his job, Robert McLelland was also absolutely right. Respect for life should not depend on the nature of someone's crime or whether the victim was Australian. The death penalty is not effective as a deterrent, except in the sense that people who receive it tend not to re-offend. As a general deterrent, it's completely pants, particularly against people who are willing to blow themselves up anyway.

While we all feel the deepest sympathy for the victims of the Bali bombings and their families and friends, killing the bombers won't bring anyone back and basing our foreign policy on a sincere but misguided desire for revenge is quite simply a failure of leadership of the highest order.

How bad are your political skills if you can't even sell opposition to the death penalty, something that's so unpopular that every state we have has already gotten rid of it? And how much confidence can we have in you if you don't even have the courage to engage in the debate? How many votes do you think you can lose on an issue like this? More votes than you can lose by making yourself look like an idiot who criticises his own party platform? Or less?

And do we really want to try to test this?

If we wanted no leadership and endless reinforcement of everything that is worst about our country, we already have a government who are REALLY GOOD AT THAT.

Repeat after me: KILLING PEOPLE IS WORNG AND WHEN THE STATE DOES IT IN COLD BLOOD IT MAKES MURDERERS OF US ALL.

Did you learn nothing from the Tampa? Or the no children overboard incident? Your party's tragically spineless metooist response allowed the government to skate through an election campaign on the basis of a lie. Can you imagine how much better off you might have been if that lie had been exposed before polling day?

You ran for the leadership of the ALP claiming that this would be the most important election in the history of the world. Well, it won't be if your position is exactly the same as the other side's on just about everything, including Appalling Treatment for anyone accused of Being Distantly Related to a Terrorist, Building of Mills that no-one except the actual people who get paid to build it actually wants, giving ridiculous amounts of money to Geelong Grammar and Sweet Stuff All to Worowa Aboriginal College, and also Less Africans. It will be a complete waste of freakin' time if the only real diiference between the two parties is some minor adjustments to Workchoices and also Less Eyebrows.

If I wanted to vote in an election where my two choices were the Liberal Party and the Young Liberals, I would move overseas.

TO HELL.

The only way I can see you actually losing this election is if the government's oft-repeated claims that your policies are just a bunch of meaningless metooism starts to resonate with swinging voters and they swing right back to their default position of "better the idiot you know".

Having identified the one way that you could lose this election, you seem to be pursuing that exact policy diligently and with great discipline. What sort of advice, exactly, are you getting and can you sack the people giving it to you right now please?

Look, let's be realistic here. I will still vote for you because short of changing your name to Beelzebubbles* and running solely on pro-Satan policies, nothing could persuade me to vote for the other guy (and even then it would be teh toughest decision ever). But I would like to spend the next few weeks seeking to persuade everyone I know to also vote for you. This won't work if one of these people asks me why we should have a change of government and I DON'T KNOW THE ANSWER.






* Utterly gratuitous Blackadder reference that seemed somehow appropriate

How did this happen?

Morgan Freeman is a genuine Hollywood legend. It doesn’t matter what role he plays, he always exudes dignity. He inhabits the skin of his character, whether it’s a prisoner as in the Shawshank Redemption and The Power of One, some dude of law enforcement in Seven or Kiss the Girls, or even the President in Deep Impact. He’s been in Oscar winning films like Amistad and Million Dollar Baby. And even when he is in a ridiculous film like Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, he manages to stand out as the one cast member who is actually doing any acting.*

Lauren Graham is not well known for her work in films, but has proved her acting talents beyond doubt on the small screen. With a little help from a great supporting cast and former Buffy script writer Jane Espenson, Ms Graham has brought us one of the most real, engaging, emotionally honest, flawed and utterly likeable characters in the history of television. It is a tribute that how well she has done this that most people would struggle to actually tell you who she plays, but few people have not, at some stage, heard of Lorelai Gilmore.

Steve Carrell has recently won endless amounts of critical acclaim for his performance in a show that most critics would have expected to absolutely hate, the US version of The Office. He is in just about everything that gets made at the moment, and even though I have no interest in ever seeing The 40 Year Old Virgin, there is no doubt that this man has considerable comic talent.

John Goodman’s career got off to a less than promising start, what with first achieving prominence as the husband on Roseanne and going on to star in The Flintsones and King Ralph, the latter being so bad that everyone single person the world mocked it, including John Goodman. Depsite these early missteps, he regularly hosted Saturday Night Live, he scored a recurring role on The West Wing, and he achieved endless amounts of indie cred for his exceptional performance as an embittered Vietnam vet in Born of the Fourth of July The Big Lebowski, which made up for all his past mistakes in the space of one very good film.


It is strange enough that even one of these people would agree to be in “Evan Almighty”. The fact that all four of them made this mistake is mindblowingly impossible to comprehend.


I hardly ever give up on a movie. I sat through Ben Affleck and Giovanni Ribisi’s “The Boiler Room” to the bitter end.** I have actually seen all of “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer”. I could even tell you in some detail how “Highlander II: The Quickening” ends. Despite all of this, I gave up on Evan Almighty after 25 minutes and I’m thrilled with that decision.

The appearance of these four otherwise fine actors in Evan Almighty clearly amounts to the biggest collective misjudgment since Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty, Charles Grodin and Isabel Adjani sat around smoking in the manner of Daniel Johns and Peter Garrett*** and saying “Hey, this script looks fantastic, lets all agree to be in Ishtar.”

Hopefully, this giant collective mistake will shortly be scientifically proven to have been exceeded by that meeting where a bunch of senior Liberal Party figures sat around and said “Hey, let’s stick with Howard, we’re sure he’ll win it for us.”

Join me in hoping, folks. Join me now.






*Yes, we all loved Alan Rickman as the Sherriff, but that was precisely because Rickman clearly was not making any attempt at acting, he was just having fun.

** Arguably this was worth it just to witness Honey Bear’s awesome perfect fury as she screamed at the television “NO, it can’t be over, NOTHING HAPPENED YET”

*** ALLEGEDLY

Grand final weekend

Wait, don't stop reading. Hardly any of this post is actually about football.

I decided not to watch the Grand Final this year. Sure I was happy for Geelong (after all, I used to live there), but I suspected that Port Adelaide were in for a very bad day and this would only remind me that had Collingwood kicked one more goal the previous week, they would had been clear favourites to break their own 17-years-and-counting premiership drought.

Of course, I didn't anticipate the extent of the absolute one sided pantsing that the match turned out to be as most of the Port players were apparently affected by some sort of cursing of the Petrificus Totalis variety and Geelong spent the final quarter living it up Normandy Style, but the scoreline just served to underline the point, really.

Instead, my parents came around for the afternoon and we spent most of it in the garden, weeding, finding bicycles and planting a lemon tree.

The lemon tree is likely to bear bitter fruit consistently for the next 30 years. This reminds me irresistably of the decision I made as a sweet innocent four year old to support Collingwood.

At least, in the case of the tree, the fruit in question can be used to make scallopini.

We also skipped the NRL Grand Final, despite my secret fondness for all things Storm. It seemed a much better idea to take the family to dinner at the Aspendale RSL. For the real highlight of the evening, you'll have to read this blog over here, but apart from freaking out on arrival because it looked exactly the same as the RSL in that small town I used to live in, there was much to be impressed with.

For a start, I love any place that has about 7 items on the menu, including three kinds of schnitzel, but finds room for a Chicken Jambalaya in there too. I was equally happy with the three course soup/acres of roast meat/pavlova combination for $15 each.

Even better, though, was the endlessly old school nature of the entertainment, provided by one dude who spends most of his time playing in a Johnny Cash tribute band, and by said dude's wife, who it must be noted does have an excellent voice.

This dude was a bit obsessed with Gracie's 80th birthday celebration, which meant that we started the show by all singing happy birthday to Gracie. Then we sang it again after the second song. And after the fourth song. Dude of entertainment then sang it himself in the style of Johnny Cash, after first noting that they had tried to get the Man in Black himself to come and sing it but "We couldn't dig him up. He lost the plot."

Seriously. Old. School.

In between various other songs, many of them from the '40s, this dude kept us entertained with, among other things,a few jokes about the latest series of Big Brother. He was aware that the show is not on at the moment, but he cunningly introduced the gags by claiming that he had taped the last few episodes and he was going to go home and watch them after the gig.

He completed his tour de force of mystifyingness by approaching me in between sets and asking me which of the elderly folk was actually Gracie the birthday girl, despite the fact that I was sitting on the far side of the room from Gracie and her friends and there was not a reason in the world to suspect that I might know the answer. I guessed and pointed.


We will be going back soon. Oh yes, we really, really will.

4 now 4 luv 4 eva. Amen

I have received a mild ticking off just over here for a comment that somewhat inadvertently implied or could possibly have implied that I was slightly minimising how absolutely good it was to have met my gorgeous wife Honey Bear.

Implying that was, of course, of all the things in the world that I could possibly do, the one that I wanted to do the least. Or, as Kevin Kline would say, I'd rather sell my nuts to a castrati.

So, let's clarify.

I met my lovely soulmate during an otherwise entirely less than good couple of years during which I lived in a town of 6000 people, mostly farmers, that for someone like me who is not a farmer and can't play Aussie Rules football for toffee, was just not an ideal place to be living.

For context, here's a few of the things that I put up with during that period:

* Shortly after I moved there, whilst living alone and knowing no-one in town, I went to the local cinema. They refused to show the film because they require a minimum of five people to make it worth the effort and I was the only one there. I seriously considered buying five tickets just so I wouldn't have to go back home but I couldn't quite justify paying $35.00 to see the Bone Collector.

* That cinema in general. It's bad when a cinema only shows one movie per week. It's worse when that movie is the Blair Witch Project.

* Visiting a church where they thought it would be a good idea to make me feel welcome by saying, in the middle of a service, "Hey, none of us have any idea who you are. Why don't you stand up and tell us a bit about yourself."

* Regularly attending a church where everyone thought I was a communist and there was one guy who was so convinced that the moon landing were faked that he actually heckled another dude for suggesting otherwise. During the children's talk

* Too much canned fruit

* Being mocked for using the term "baby cow"

* Bad coffee

* Being expected to eat something that claimed to be a "Vegetarian Italiano" at a localish Pizza Hut. It had freakin' PINEAPPLE ON IT.

* Being looked at like I was a weird uptight city boy for suggesting pineapple wasn't very Italian

* No-one being able to understand why I wasn't amused by jokes about Aborigines

* The seriously mad flatmate who set my couch on fire

* Having to explain that one, and the resulting damage to the walls, to the landlord, even though I was in another town when it happen

* Stony silence from the landlord when I tried making a light hearted reference to this six months later

* Accidentally gatecrashing a dairy farmer's convention because I tried to meet Honey Bear for dinner on a Wednesday night and the only pub that would serve us food was hosting the convention in question. I learned a lot about silage

* Somehow getting talked into driving a four hour round trip to go with my flatmate to visit her family, on the basis that said flatmate's family lived on a farm and they would be cooking a traditional old country meal. Which turned out to be sausage rolls and chips from a supermarket

* As part of running a local youth group, turning up to a combined event called "Survivor Night" which, as it truned out, involved standing in some farmer dude's paddock in the dark for three hours. When the kids asked afterwards "What did that have to do with Survivor?" I said "I don't know either."

* Hokey pokey night at the local community centre.

* A hoedown

And the list could go on. I suspect, however, that it just did.


Let me be entirely clear. Living in that town, with all the ridiculousness and houses full of rodents, was absolutely worth it in order to meet my fabulous, gorgeous, amazing Honey Bear who I love to distraction and always will.

If, as Gigglewick rather recently suggested, if my job had been pushing shards of glass up a sandpaper hill with my nose, it would still have been worth it.

Indeed, if for reasons beyond all imagining I had been elected chair of the local chapter of the Young Divas and Everyone Who Was Ever on Popstars Live Appreciation Society, again, still worth it.

Meeting Honey Bear, and being married to this stunning woman for six years with many more to come, would be worth it. No matter what.