How sad must it be for people who peak early.  By early I’m talking about fifteen to thirty years of age. I say this because I’ve never peaked and don’t plan to for at least another decade or so.

When I was at a rough and tumble high school in the steel city there were a couple of fellows who had the whole world bundled up.  Golden Boys.  One was a not too bright jock who was so far up his own arse that he could pass as a wiry hula hoop.  The other was just simply a nice guy – good at sport as well as being academically solid.

Some thirty years later the jock was fat, bald and on his third heart bypass and Thai wife. The other just a poor sad divorced drunk fucker who was prone to periods of barking madness.

I  thought of them both last night.  I was cruising the free to air after the cricket chewing gum had lost its flavour (BBL) and I came upon one of the biggest indulgent loads of shit I’ve ever seen.  Now I benchmark this stuff – I’d rate this turdinaire a solid gold star Five Allens. This is based on one Allen being the equivalent of an embarrassing sycophantic interview exchange between the Parrot and pick and lick James Junior Goanna Packer. The show was titled “British Icons” featuring a live concert from Sir Elton ‘Fingers’ John interspersed with soft sell questions from a fawning no name.  Fingers was comfortably fat at the keys and welcomed on stage a guest to sing “Sad Songs” or to give it its full flaccid – “Sad Songs – Say so much”. You know the one with the chorus-
“Turn ’em on, turn ’em on
Turn on those sad songs
When all hope is gone
Why don’t you tune in and turn them on.”

The guest was the increasingly tuneless piece of Glaswegian cheek, Rod Stewart. Dodger Stewart’s thin voice clearly peaked on albums with Faces in the early 70s when they did such classics as “An old Raincoat will never let you down” and “Gasoline Ally”. But apart from a minor shit spot sugar smaltz with “Mandolin Wind” and “Maggie May” this chancer has toured on his past for decades. Apparently his concerts are now full of singalongs and soccer balls. Such a larrikin.  A few years back he put on a tux and did shit-awful reheated, badly sung classics such as “It had to be you”. This project was titled “The Great American Songbook” and a second follow up featured more of Stewart slaughtering songs.  It was a success of sorts. It had truckloads of women in trackies tweaking their love giblets and flanges while eating crispy creams as if they were gnoring on Rod’s wizenned love pump. But he’d become just a sad shadow of what he once was.  A tuneless, hopeless joke.

Stewart’s performance last night was just as flat and smug and made me wish that he had been a co-pilot in John Denver’s Helicopter.

As in music, sport stars come and go but very few continue to defy gravity.  Some however reinvent themselves after early disappointments.  Stephen Smith the fidgety Australian captain and batting behomoth is one such rooster. As most know Smithy started off his cricket career as a spinner and a pinch hitter. He was a chubby little fellow that often let both himself and team down with lusty longhandle tactics. But now he is compared to the Don. Hopefully he spreads a quid or two on the bar from time to time. Don was a tight arse when it came to shouting his team mates. Ian Chappell tried to garner support from a retired Bradman for a player pay rise but Bradman wouldn’t offer the support. Chappell said it was as if it was the Don spending his own money.  Bradman was a stockbroker of sorts and had a reputation for monetary meanness. I’ll go on record saying it doesn’t matter how many runs he scored, Don Bradman was simply a selfish stupid old cunt.

Speaking of stupid people who peaked early I note Nigella Lawson is at the the Opera House in a week or so talking about the deeper meaning of food. She will be interviewed by the alleged food journalist ‘Mmmmmmaive’ Omeira. ‘Mmmm’ is the only person I know who has made a career out of an utterance. But Nige Bites has for years defied all the basic tenants of good cooking by serving up fat riddled lazy recipes and subsequently soared up the charts. She could do this because she had a large set of Mudgee Mailbags and the mother/milk-soaked nanny English public were besotted. Bites only had to lick a chocolate laden spoon in front of her fridge and a thousand Grimsby pensioners would cum on their cushions. TV Cuisine has now moved on and she hasn’t. So now a more than ample Bites trawls the colonies flogging her suggestive recipes to fatties and fantasizers. It’s noted that her sad fare isn’t selling that well and you can now pick up half-priced tickets for this fat fandango.

I however have a solution to all of this. It will spare the hasbeens the embarrassment of acting out their downward flights in public. It will also protect us from them.  It is the creation of a Republic.  Not an Australian Republic. But the Republic of Yesterland.  I’m suggesting it should be on one of those great islands the Chinese are building in the Pacific. It’s a place where your Nigellas and Rods can idle out their downward spirals. No new rising stars would be there.  Faded politicians, sportspeople, singers, actors, jugglers and one-book writers could bore themselves shitless without raining on our present parade. While those who want to indulge somewhat sadly in someone else’s past glory or revisit a reheated classic can book a cruise and head to the Republic of Yesterland.

There will be no surprises as they’ll know it doesn’t get any better than this!

I was strolling down George Street the other morning. You know the main Sydney transport artery that’s been clogged by inefficiency and high vis clowns who seem more intent on getting their morning coffee than doing any work.

I heard a car horn. A ruddy-bloke in a little Mercedes had chipped a bike courier for the mere hide of using the road in front of him. The courier stopped, turned around and gave, the now timid prick in the car, a mouthful.  I couldn’t help myself. I let go too in support of the lycra warrior.  But then he performed a piece of pure art. He got off his bike and deliberately wiped his lycra arse on the mini Merc’s bonnet. Not quickly, but slowly. Like a prick-teasing burlesque artist at the top of their game.   Bravo Bike Boy!  I gave him the thumbs up.

I felt the same on Tuesday when I saw Lloyd ‘The Tool’ Williams snatch another Melbourne Cup through the pure weight of cash. Williams and his goofy hooray-henry son, Nick, pop-up in spring like fucking field mushrooms.  Having spent the year ensconced in their Macedon bunker using their Packer pounds to buy pre-trained European Horse flesh.

When I saw him on the box I wanted to rub my bum all over his silly gray morning suit. I wanted to grab his stupid gray top hat and dunk it in the nearest port-o-loo. I wanted to tell the fawning media that this poncy pretender adds nothing to the fundamentals of racing in this country.  He is simply an equine opportunist who uses his considerable wealth to squeeze the juice out of the industry.

You will not see the Williams gang hanging over the rails at Mangatang cheering on one of their steeds in the Dial Before You Dig BM52 Handicap. You will not see him lobbying for fairer conditions for strappers and busted arse jockeys. He is simply content to raid the barns of Europe to indulge his Flemo fantasies.

A mate of the Fat Packers, founder of Crown, co-executor of the Goanna’s loot scoot and founder of the Shane Warne Foundation – Williams has the cruel gob of a crow and the smugness of a fat banker. His Hudson Conway company packages together his various property businesses. It includes his racing folly sandwiched in amongst property developments. It lost $7.6M last year. The company’s mission statement is “to help all Australians grow and protect their wealth”. That’s exactly what Crown has done for years, hasn’t it?

Lloyd Williams has protected his and his mate’s wealth for years by draining the pockets of gamblers at Crown Casino. They have broken rules to bust the best. He now draculises the industry that he professes to love.  But Lloyd is not about all Australians nor love.  He’s simply about himself and his fat Macedon mates. He is a dead set Class One Toad ever deserving of an A-Grade Arse wipe.

The extremely efficient German company ALDI got back to me.  It was your standard customer complaint response.

Dear Marina

Thank you for your response over my disappointment with ALDI’s Garlic # 77203.

I note that there was no attached Aldi compensatory voucher to cover my said disappointment.  This disappointment is, I can fairly claim, to be on the profound level of disappointment.

I also note that you say “your experience with ALDI’s product has been documented and forwarded to the appropriate departments.” 

I am unsure what this actually means. You will remember from my first piece of correspondence I wanted to actually know how ALDI was going to ensure that no further profoundly disappointing produce would appear on their shelves again (read here sad brocollini and rotting garlic).  I assume that the appropriate departments are Quality Control and Customer Assurance, however I will be awaiting their fulsome response with great interest.

Marina, your suggestion of taking the receipt together with the rotting garlic back to the store of purchase is indeed an excellent one. Given that the place of purchase was Ballina and I actually reside in Balmain (Sydney) this could cause a minor problem – logistically that is.  I believe that is actually a distance of around 740.2 kilometres between the two.

Look Marina – I want to work on this logistically challenging issue with you.  I could fly up to Ballina as I note that Virgin Airlines are doing some great deals at the moment – can you believe $89 would get me up there tomorrow and the same amount for the return journey?

Now obviously there would be transfers to and from both airports but I’ll leave that up to you clever and efficient people at ALDI to work out whether it is worth you covering my travel costs to return to the scene of my profound disappointment. 

So I suppose where we are at now is I will wait a reasonable time to get my fulsome response (and hopefully an ALDI voucher).

Regards

I realised when I posted that the Australian Band is actually ‘1927’ not ‘1928’ – Kerist that makes the garlic even older.

I recently spent what seemed a lot of time up at Bogan Bay.  For those who don’t know where that is you just head up the M1 about 150 clicks north until you reach Lardtown and then turn right.   It’s an area where a lot of fat people congregate.  A bit like a gym.    Fortunately in late January most of the crowds that flock to the beachside area to wash had either self-immolated or been arrested for crimes against fashion. But there were still enough large specimens there to cause concern.  On the beach there were still the outcrops of large whale-like women who bobbed like giant watermelons when swimming accompanied by men with labourer’s tans who attempted to sand strut but in reality waddled, weighed down by excess body hair, oil and chains.  Some groups were decent enough to erect barriers in the form of large cheap tents to protect young kiddies from the end results of high fat, sugar and salt diets.   However there was still the danger that small children could be lost for days in the lava flow of convenience fat.

I want to make it very clear this is not a case of tagging the fatties.   However I do understand how it must seem as at one stage I was in favour of installing weighing machines at the gate of every school. If you were too fat – bad luck no school until you cut down the lard, fatso.  Simple but it probably needed a tweak.  My teenage obesity strategy of having a candidate risk a HSC percentile downgrade for every five kilos they were overweight also created comment.   I simply think that I was before my time or possibly didn’t properly sugarcoat the concept.

Look I have fat friends –  like Porky Rind who visibly shakes, sweats and gets an engorged member near a McDonalds – so I get it.  My caveat however is that I would not stand between Porky and a cream bum.  But what I don’t get is the lack of legislative action to stop these fat merchants of menace dominating the advertising landscape with impunity and sentencing an increasing number of people to a declining quality of life and ultimately an early death.

It’s no news that we are getting fatter as a nation and are losing the battle to remain moderately healthy. Figures compiled by Adelaide University’s Public Health Information Development Unit found that Bundaberg had the highest rate of obesity of any local government area.  Go Sugar Town! The obesity figures come after a Murdoch Children’s Research Institute study of 4000 Australian children which found that kids from poor families are three times more likely than the wealthiest kids to grow up obese.   We are heading towards a Gold in the Global Fat Olympics, according to the latest report of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Australia now ranks fourth in the list of the fattest country in the world. The Unites States, Mexico, and New Zealand are sitting comfortably at the first, second, and third positions, respectively.  Bloody Kiwis!  What a joke.  We are not even good enough or fat enough to slide into Bronze.

So to our summer of cricket and the role of the clown commentators in selling fat futures to the kiddies.  Over after over the Channel 9 commentators Slats, Heals, Bats, Bumhole and Tubby and every other minor character who ever waved a willow or bowled a bumper stepped up, dribbling, to eulogise the sponsors of their Summer of Fat.   Schooled in the subtleties of cross promotion they stepped up to the crease to baste us with never ending yarns about KFC.  They even had the pommy dope Michael ‘Vac’ Vaughan perched in some suspended sky-high dining room over the SCG eating a bucket of congealed chicken.  I’m not a believer but I prayed to the Creed (as in Saint Graham) for a violent windstorm to send ‘Vac”‘ and his fat-coated bucket heads crashing to the turf.

These are all people of privilege who have earned considerable wealth from sport.  These are the clowns that pay personal trainers to scythe off their winter coats because they can.  All come with the income, the education and lifestyle to know that eating this fat soaked rubbish is not good for you.  But still dribbling like deranged salesmen within an inch of their quarterly targets they continued to sell to all a relentless summer of salt, sugar and shite.

Of course ‘they’ claim that it is about education and parental responsibility.  It’s about choice. The marketplace.  They may say if people are too lazy and too stupid then it’s nothing to do with them.  Well I’m sorry you sad, selfish lot you may think that it is not your fault.  But you are wrong.  You have ignored your responsibility to the community that has afforded you a life where you can and should say no to the excesses of this fatzkrieg.  You Mark Nicholas, Michael Slater, Mark Taylor, Ian Healey and other minor mutes are simply a bunch of greedy, unprincipled, fat fuckers.

I have often lain awake after a night on the claret cordial thinking whether an informed jury of my peers would convict me for ever calling Jamie ‘Al’ Packer a mean-spirited prick.  Unsure of the blurred legal lines between opinion and fact when defending oneself against a defamation case I also wonder what evidence I could tender to support my claim.  The biggest weakness in my defence would be that I do not have concrete evidence that Jamie Al Packer is a prick so I would naturally never call him one.

However in theory, if they were mounting their case against me Al’s legal eagles may be able to use the principle of precedence by raising the ghost of an earlier indiscretion that I allegedly committed against the young Jamie some decades ago.   It happened when I was a ‘guest’ in one of the boxes at the Sydney Cricket Ground.  From memory, it was the then State Bank corporate box.  The State Bank had recently morphed from the Rural Bank that once proudly claimed “We do more for you…personally”.  This was a distant time when customers were king not the shareholders.  I’d cut a hole in a few bottles of Tyrell’s Vat 47 Chardonnay and was well on the way when I went out onto the balcony.  I glanced left and there was the unmistakable Packer profile.  The bull-like build and the extraordinary chin that goes on forever.  Easter Island had come to the SCG.  Without thinking I blurted out “ Son of Goanna!”. 

Al kept his eye on an ordinary game of league but his companion, Chris ‘Lucky’ Murphy, solicitor to the stars and scallywags, didn’t.  ‘Lucky’ gave me the death stare as he brushed dandruff off his shirt.  The only thing I could think of at the time was why do people with snowfall-like dandy brazenly wear black?

A bloke I do like who makes a quid from cartooning once told me he had been at a dinner party where Al claimed that his Daddy Go had “saved cricket”.   The Meg Ryan obsessed Michael Parkinson was also at the dinner.  Parky took offence at this airbrushing and berated young Al for mistaking greed for philanthropy.

But let’s not dwell on the past, your Honour, for in more recent times Al’s bid for putting the bingo into Bangaroo and the seemingly extraordinary acquiescence of the people in charge of the process to treat him like a protected species does raise questions about undue influence.  I raise this in the interests of background only, that in Sydney the slipstream to success seems to be predicated on pleasing people like the Parrot and the Packers.  These are the people who pick and stick regardless. So as the increasingly befuddled and scrubbed Parrot struggles to find facts (see Media Watch) in his world of radio dribbles, Al struggles to hold a girl for longer than the length of Parrot’s talk-back radio delay.  They are people who like to get their own way and give very little grunt to the public good despite ‘leaked’ faux good deeds.   The fabled good deeds?  Daddy Go funding hospitals so he could get a bed and slipping dealers and waitresses a slim wad when he made millions at the tables.

But does Al’s uncanny gift of getting his own way make him mean-spirited or at worst a prick?  I think not.  In the Obedian world of NSW it makes him just another player.  Please note, your Honour, I do not wish to raise any matters of undue influence over process nor the dud figures that consultants used to support Al’s attempt to civilise the city.  I mention them purely as context.  I would in support of my claim that he is mean-spirited, table what he and his Crownie colleagues have done by changing the rules of blackjack.  In the Age newspaper last year, Jason Dowling put it well.

“They say the house always wins. At Crown casino they have gone to great lengths to ensure the adage holds true.  Rule changes at the casino mean the house does not lose when it has a hand of 22 in Blackjack Plus – a version of the world’s most popular casino card game.  Blackjack is also commonly referred to as 21 because the aim is to get 21 and not go over. But under Blackjack Plus, which is the form of blackjack on all low-bet tables (sic below $50) at Crown, a ”stand-off” occurs if the dealer’s hand is 22, meaning no one wins. Players are not given the same leniency if they go over 21.”

In other words you are well and truly rooted at Crown if you have limited funds and cannot afford to bet big at blackjack.  The Victorian Commission for Gambling Regulation found ”the rules of the game to be compliant with principles of player fairness and game security”.  Anti-gambling crusader Tim Costello said if Crown was allowed to get 22 playing blackjack then ”Essendon should be allowed to have 19 players on the field”.  I love the Good Costello and while I totally agree with the sentiment I believe the world would be a significantly better place if there were both less Crowns and less AFL players.

Your Honour and the esteemed jury, as to my claim that Jamie ‘Al’ Packer is a prick.  I wish to call an expert witness to the stand.  An authority without peer. Would Mr Alan Jones please come forward…

I was dragged up in the world of unlimited tackle rugby league on the coalfields.  A time of wet Saturdays where glue-like churns of cricket pitch mud turned local games into wet ugly propositions of no quarter given.  Then in the late sixties and seventies I was slowly seduced into the foreign art of rugby union through the ABC’s Saturday coverage of the Sydney competition. Post Depression sensibilities meant that there was no colour television in our house.   One waited for such things.  One bided one’s time before making such an extravagant purchase.  We didn’t need one.  The prism of enlightenment was a flickering black and white television screen and it was more than enough because what I saw was a world that was tough, fast but ultimately terribly exciting.

When Kenny Catchpole and the Ellas (Rube, Quin and Rose) danced the wonderful magic and a flowing mane of hair called Russell Fairfax dropped kicked from half-way all was well with the world.  Even on wet Saturdays I was happy to be thoughtfully lectured by a science teacher-like Trevor Allan in the art of rugby and warmed by the bonhomie of Norman ‘Nugget’ May.  Trevor Allan, a Wallaby of distinction, was no shirker.  He was typical of the era, he played above his weight, firmly and fairly and without fuss.  As a teenager he shared an ice-run with one of his brothers and would haul 28-pound blocks of ice on a hook in either hand sometimes climbing three or four flights of stairs to make the delivery.  He didn’t let opportunity melt in his hand, he had a job to do – it was that simple.

This was a time when I felt that all was good with the world.  The ginger nuts weren’t falling into your cup of tea and the mail was getting through.  I knew that blokes who worked in a bank or at the local school were turning up and having a go.  Some decades later in 1999 when Stephen Larkham kicked a field goal in extra time to beat the Yarpies with his Dad’s ringing endorsement “He’s never kicked a field goal in his life” this ‘have-a-go’ spirit was still alive.  And in Wellington in 2000, we saw an impossible victory with the towering big fella John Eales booting a penalty goal and clasping the Bledisloe Cup ever so closely as if it held his Nonna’s special pomodora recipe. I smiled with relief that ‘we’ had done it….it just doesn’t get any better.  And it didn’t.  We moved into the funk.  We were becalmed despite some interesting times and then we entered the ark ages when the vandals from the north turned the lights off.  A time when England made ten man rugby successful again.

And so to now.  After a stumblebum performance against the Pumas a week or so ago Australian Rugby has it’s neck securely held in the national laughing-stock.   Despite a scrambling one point win against the Meat Lovers people rightly lined up to throw corn, enchiladas and fruit at this rag-tag bunch of poor struggling boofheads.  Then at the same time as Ewen McKenzie was lauded as the “new beginning of Australian Rugby” by Fairfax Media, the Little ‘O’ (James O’Connor) was refused access to a flight to Bali due to the island having exceeded their September Bogan Quota.

But if Ewen is the new beginning I really want a touch of back-to-the–future.  Nothing against Ewie mind you, he’s having a go, but despite panning a few flecks of gold with the Reds I don’t think he is the answer.  I don’t think he has the ability to challenge and to create something new.  He is of the old school of potatoes and corned meat with white sauce (and there is nothing wrong with that) but it is a new game and we haven’t adapted very well.

I’ll be honest with you unlike a lot of people who bother to write about rugby – I don’t know anything about the game.  But a lack of knowledge obviously hasn’t stopped some people so why should I stay in the shed.  However what I do know is that the current national team plays like a bunch of tight-skirted, moon-shined hillbillies.  They have delivered to us a couple of years of tosh and broken promises under coach Deans.  And now under Coach McKenzie we were promised a change but we got the same old, sad, tired game that has been trotted out for a decade.  Is this the best we can do?

You see to me the logical choice for a new coach was Jake ‘the Peg’ White. White coached the Brumbies to an unlikely Super Final and they were the only provincial team to have a win against the touring Lions on a bitingly cold evening in Dull Town.   ‘Peg’s’ problem was despite his success (and being a South African) he didn’t fit the bill according to the ARU’s current “thinking”. If I can I will try to paraphrase the ARU’s current thinking – it’s high order stuff so you may struggle to understand – it goes like this;

“Let’s think for a minute…. We tried a foreigner but it’s gone pear-shaped and ‘Computer’ doesn’t get on with him…we should go for home-grown talent…take your time….oh bugger we don’t have any…mmm ok who hasn’t been DUI in the last twelve months…has he got a suit? “

That’s about it.  That’s the current thinking that’s guiding our poor boys.  So my suggestions are these.  Firstly, a good old-fashioned weed-out.  Get rid of self-centred inked dopes like the Little ‘O’, Computer’ and any other flash Harry who thinks they can piss-up the privilege of playing for their country and put in decent, hard-working blokes who will have a red-hot go until their legs fall off.  But that’s only the start. Then let’s try something new.  The plan is we put ‘Nobody’, ‘Noddy’, ‘Bernie’, ‘Bumshaft’, ‘Biscuits’, ‘Boxhead’ and anyone else who can tie up their shoe laces in a room for a week.  We give them plenty of biros, butchers paper and Bundy.  Their task is to come up with a new style of rugby.

We then march forward – we have a new plan – in fact it’s an old plan.  We get out of the funk.  We actually try to do things differently, completely differently – like catching the ball. Now wouldn’t that put things back in black and white again?