A column about small bars
Sydney pubs are all the same. They’re big, noisy and crammed full of people who don’t realise how loud they’re shouting because they’ve had too much to drink. And while that’s fine if you’re in the mood, I sometimes feel like a quieter, smaller place. A more intimate place, where you can talk properly without having to shout over the dodgy dance music or Chisel covers band. Un-Australian, I know.
In other cities like Melbourne and Adelaide, there are numerous cosy, small bars that allow conversation, and all cafes are licensed. But Sydney’s self-defeating licensing laws largely restrict alcohol to pubs, which means that people only go there to drink, and generally a lot. It’s supposed to stop people from having too much, but visit any pub late on a Friday night and you won’t see much evidence of “no more, it’s the law”.
I saw the opposite extreme on a recent visit to Tokyo, in a tiny block of narrow laneways and tiny buildings called Golden Gai. The area contains several hundred separate bars in an area of about the size of your average RSL club car park, each with its own quirky theme. There was one entirely devoted to Pink Floyd memorabilia, and another full of teddy bears, but the most bizarre was called Cremaster, after a series of strange, experimental art films made by Bjork’s boyfriend. Talk about wanting to keep numbers down.
We tried the most famous (well okay, the one in Lonely Planet, to be honest) – La Jetée, which has been run for over thirty years by a Japanese woman who’s obsessed with French films. She’s only got enough room for about eight people crammed up against the bar and around a small table in the corner. So as an Australian, I was baffled about where she’d hidden the pokies.
The most interesting feature is a rack of signed half-empty bottles left by famous film directors – among them Zhang Yimou, Francis Ford Coppola, and Quentin Tarantino. We were keen to nick some of Quentin’s vodka, but since there was only one other person in the bar, we felt that might have been frowned on. To add insult to injury, the owner politely declined my offer to sign a bottle in my official role as a columnist for The Glebe.
The whole bar is literally the same size as my bathroom, which gave me an ingenious idea. I could open Sydney’s first authentic Japanese-style watering-hole in my apartment, dispensing drinks and down-home advice from the vanity. My patrons would be crammed on little stools in the bath, and under the towel rail. And one lucky punter could take the most generous seat in the place, on the toilet.
The quirky bathroom décor would be oh-so cool, and I could call it “Salle de bains” to draw in the high-class guests. Best of all, if someone had too much to drink, I could just turn the shower on them.
Unfortunately, though, the licensing laws in this city make my dream impossible. Thanks to the pervasive influence of the hotel lobby, there are only a limited number of pub licenses, which is why they all install pokies to offset the cost. Basically, it’s a huge cartel. (Possibly the true meaning of “no more, it’s the law”.) So I’ll have to open my bathroom-bar as an illegal speakeasy, I think. If you know where to go, just press my buzzer and say you need to use the toilet.
A column about mortgages
After the last election, I was furious with homeowners. Furious because they’d bought John Howard’s cynical promise to keep interest rates low. That ploy won him the election even though interest rates are decided by the independent Reserve Bank, and respond more to global trends than any policy of the Federal Government. What an evil genius.
I was also furious that they didn’t go for Mark Latham’s desperate attempt to reassure homeowners – the Interest Rate Guarantee, where he signed a giant piece of paper committing him to keep “downward pressure” on rates. I’m not quite sure what would have happened if he had failed to do this – perhaps the electorate would have rapped him over the knuckles with an oversized ruler or something.
I was ropable with the swing voters in mortgage belt areas like Western Sydney, because I thought they’d voted incredibly selfishly. Rather than looking at the plight of those less fortunate than themselves, they were voting out of fear, just as they had in 2001. Only instead of fearing refugees and Al Qaeda – which they thought were the same thing – they feared the banks. (Fair enough, too; they’re pretty scary.) Young families, indebted to the hilt to buy their dream homes, were terrified by the prospect of having to find even an extra $20 a week. And I thought they voted incredibly selfishly.
But now I’m in the process of buying my first home (or more specifically, miniscule apartment) and that’s changed everything. Bugger principles, bugger education and welfare for those who desperately need it. I’m voting for whoever can keep my repayments from getting even more ridiculous.
Really, housing prices in Sydney are absurd. You can’t buy a closet within cooee of the city for less than about $300,000 these days. (I know, I’ve tried.) Sure, you can still get a big house cheaply if you’re prepared to compromise on location. But really – and I know I’m speaking to fellow inner-city geography snobs here – who wants to live in West Woop-Woop, where they don’t even know how to make a decent chai latte?
The problem is that it’s not like our salaries have kept up. Sydney housing prices have more than doubled in a decade, and salaries haven’t. It’s more expensive to buy in London or New York, of course, but the wages there are far higher than anywhere else in the UK or US, keeping in step. But Sydney salaries aren’t much higher. If you ever want to be really depressed, check out what it would cost you to own a place like the one you’re living in now in Melbourne. If only it didn’t mean living in Victoria.
We’ll have the last laugh, though. It’s painful now, but our houses will appreciate far more over our lifetimes. Sydney’s full of future property millionaires who are paying off their mortgage, but will be in great shape when they retire. I suggest we all use our fabulous future wealth to travel down to Melbourne and gloat.
I’ll tell you what else – there’s no way I’m trusting Kim Beazley with my mortgage. (Admittedly I didn’t trust him before I had one, either.) He’s from Perth, and they don’t know what it means to have a crippling mortgage. For the price of my one bedroom apartment, I could probably have bought most of the Perth CBD. But I’d rather have my Sydney closet, thanks.
Oh, and as for John Howard, cynical fearmonger? Thanks for the $7000 First Home Owners’ Grant, mate, you’re a legend. Can you put a white picket fence around an apartment?
A column about MySpace
I’ve always thought of myself as an internet guru. I was using it back in the old days, before there were even pictures of Paris Hilton on it. But now, before I’ve even hit thirty, the internet is making me feel old and out of touch.
This is thanks to a site that recently hit the worldwide top 10, alongside such giants as Google and eBay – MySpace.com. It has millions of members worldwide and astonishingly, it was recently purchased by the publisher of this newspaper, News Corporation, for $580 million. It’s a site that lets you put up your own page, and talk with all your friends online.
Hoary 29-year-old dinosaurs such as myself used to meet people in bars or at parties. Not any more. These days, it seems, young folk meet one another exclusively through MySpace. The site allows you to leave comments on another person’s page, and my friend’s 19-year-old sister has a whopping 180 contacts on hers. They seem to spend every waking moment talking about what they’re doing on the weekend – other than a brief diversion to talk about how gross it was that her flatmate made out with someone on her couch. Even just reading about it is absolutely exhausting.
And reading about it isn’t necessarily easy, because the site’s members seem totally incapable of using standard English. One friend of this girl, for instance, commented “NAH BUT SERIOUSLY ULEH... OMG ULEH”. If you can understand that, you’re either under 21 or have a PhD in teenager linguistics. And there are 450-odd incomprehensible comments like this on this girl’s site alone.
The internet was supposed to be for nerds who never saw sunlight, but not any more. There is a new generation of internet-literate teenagers who clearly go out more in the average week than I do all year, and use MySpace so they can save on SMSing each other when they’re in front of their computers.
But perhaps the strangest thing about MySpace is that it’s also full of celebrities. One of its biggest advocates is Mr Britney Spears, Kevin Federline, who maintains his own page – which must be the ugliest thing on the entire internet – to showcase his lacklustre rapping skills. Travel to www.myspace.com/kevinfederlineforreal and you can hear his “exclusive kfederalfreestyle” rap track, in which he disses all the “haters”, finishing up by saying “f*** the media”. It’s absolutely hilarious.
And Federline certainly has a lot of haters – the site is perfectly designed to allow ordinary punters to insult celebrities to their face. Among the comments when I visited his site recently were "K-Fed Actully (sic) makes David Hasselhoff look good" and "Oh my God, it's like you two come from a special retard planet.” Charming. Never before have so many insults been directed to so many celebrities. No wonder the kids are addicted to it.
If MySpace is the future of the web – and Rupert Murdoch clearly thinks it is – then there is going to be a bigger barrier than ever between the old and the young. And I’m clearly on the wrong side of it.
Still, I can embrace change. So I’m putting up a MySpace site to invite people over to my place on Saturday night to watch a little TV, and perhaps even drink a cup of tea. I just hope the kids are nicer to me than Kevin Federline.
A column about Harry Seidler
If sheer impact on a city’s skyline were the measure of success, there would be no greater architect in history than Harry Seidler. His buildings are ubiquitous in Sydney, and some of them have been controversial ever since they were built. Who hasn’t admired the magnificent vista of the Harbour Bridge from Circular Quay, only to have it spoilt by Blues Point Tower sticking up like a sore thumb from the middle of a bushland reserve?
The only thing good about the brick hideousness of Blues Point Tower is that there’s only one of them – as opposed to Seidler’s original plan for a cluster of skyscrapers along the peninsula. But as an eyesore that dominates its surrounding environment, this Big Seidler puts the Big Banana and Merino to shame.
Similarly, the Horizon building sticks out above a heritage area where most buildings are two stories. This building has given the rest of Sydney a new attitude to Eastern Suburbs residents. Whereas once we used to hate them for cramming their ostentatious mansions along the waterfront, the Horizon lets us also hate them for cramming their ostentatious luxury skyscrapers into our views.
It’s the selfishness that’s always bugged me – the idea that very wealthy people can buy extraordinarily good views for themselves while imposing hideousness on the rest of us. Bugger the rest of us – the rich want good views, and don’t care what the rest of us paupers have to look at.
This approach has been replicated by Meriton, to the great misfortune of the CBD. They’ve thrown up lots of cheap, ugly apartments which have great views – as long as you can’t see any of the other Meriton apartments nearby. It seems fitting that Seidler’s last major project was the “Meriton Tower”, in progress bang smack in the middle of George St.
I do like a lot of the architect’s more recent buildings, and his city office towers like Australia Square and Grosvenor Place are excellent. But his death last week, with the accompanying evaluation of his legacy, got me thinking about residential architecture, and how different the Seidler approach is to the way things work in the Inner West.
There probably isn’t anything more egalitarian than terraces – a range of identical houses without even side windows, affording views only of the streets and backyards. Everyone’s house is exactly the same, meaning that no-one has bragging rights over anyone else. Seidler would have hated them.
Glebe itself was built by the Anglican Church to provide cheap housing to its parishioners – that’s what the word ‘glebe’ itself means. And the Sydney Diocese sold its cheap housing to the Whitlam Government in the 1974, which is why so much of the suburb’s properties are still administered through the Housing Commission – a stark contrast to the general trend of shunting the less well-off as far away from the CBD as possible.
The whole region is full of charming, low-rise workers’ cottages, and even though the housing price boom means that actual workers are increasingly rare in the area these days, it’s a refreshing antidote to a city that’s obsessed with cramming luxury apartments in wherever possible.
This heritage must be preserved. Let’s hope that in 100 years, the Inner West looks exactly the same as it does now, and that the residents of the horrible skyscrapers that choke the rest of the city skyline are the ones looking jealously at one place where buildings are human-scale and neighbours can still talk to one another across the back fence. It’s what Harry Seidler wouldn’t have wanted.
A column about my computer
Recently I had a family tragedy. Well, it felt like one anyway. My beloved laptop, my constant companion and best friend, packed up due to a fault with its ‘logic board.’ The same problem, in fact, that affected Danna Vale recently when she made those comments about Australia aborting itself out of existence.
I had to ship its glorious, shiny body off to the repair shop, where it had a two week respite from me relentlessly pounding its keys while checking the news websites every fifteen minutes to see whether there was a new Paris Hilton scandal, or crazed gunman Dick Cheney had shot anyone else. Which is more or less my job description as editor of The Chaser website. Well, that and dealing with employees who’ve sent Michael Leunig cartoons to Iran on their own time, but put our office phone number in the email.
So the laptop was having a fine old time living it up at the computer equivalent of a health spa, getting its insides scrubbed clean and lots of shiny new replacement parts added. It was seeing other people, like the kindly technician who knew how to make it feel good in ways that I didn’t even understand. Apparently he ‘zapped its PRAM’, which I guess more or less means blowing its mind. I was so jealous when I heard that. And I was left cooling my heels at home, missing it desperately whenever I wanted to check my bank balance, listen to music, or even just check my email. As Dionne Warwick put it, there was always something there to remind me.
Oh, I tried getting back out there. I tried seeing other computers – I went to my mum’s house and using hers all day. In other words, I tried to deal with the separation by moving back home. But it just wasn’t the same. It didn’t have all my email, my programs, my bookmarks – all my familiar stuff. It’s hard for guys like me to just change like that overnight, and develop a whole new relationship with a different computer. I’m not one of those PC playboys, with a laptop in every port. I’m just a simple guy who wants one, committed, monogamous computer he can call his own.
But because I work on the internet all day, this situation posed a huge problem. It wasn’t just my private life that was in disarray – it was affecting my work as well. I found I couldn’t get any work done. Offensive satirical news stories were not getting posted. People were starting to notice. They’d take me to one side and ask me what was wrong. Although their sympathy did start to wane when they heard that it was just a broken computer. You wouldn’t understand unless it’s happened to you.
Eventually it came back from the shop. It was an emotional reunion. Well, I cried, at least – it just booted correctly, which is as much emotion as I’ve come to expect from it. And all my files were still there. It was like it’d never gone away. I was so happy.
Initially, there was a degree of awkwardness there. It’s not easy to just pick up where you left off, and just forgive the pain you’ve been through. I wouldn’t have minded if it had needed just a day or two away, but two weeks was a really long time to leave me.
I found myself not trusting it anymore. What if it happened again? Perhaps on a permanent basis? I realised I’d become too attached. I was stifling it by spending all my time with it. So I’ve agreed to give it some space. I’m going to start using other computers as well. So that if it needs to go away again, I won’t be left high and dry.
We think we’re the generation that use computers. But what I discovered when I had to cope for two weeks without my laptop is that in fact it’s computers that are using us.
A column about beer
Aussie men love their beer. It’s second only to Bradman. (And now that it can be bought with a Talking Boony, it may even have sneaked into first place.) When it comes to drinking, bundy and Coke are probably second and third place on the dais, but beer is the undisputed champ.
We love it so much that our language is full of references to it. “I owe you a beer”, “go for a quick beer”… it’s a proxy for being sociable. From Hawkey to Singo, it’s always been the great leveller – in conformist Australia, membership of the group is defined in largely in terms of how quickly you can get a schooner glass from full to upside-down on your head.
Which is why I’ve always felt quite ashamed of the fact that I don’t like beer. Now, before you chuck the newspaper away in disgust at my softness, I’m not a teetotaller. (Phew, nearly lost you there.) And sure, on a hot day, I can sometimes enjoy the refreshing nature of a really cold ale. If I ignore the taste. But given a choice between yeasty, bloating beer, and just about anything short of a Bacardi Breezer, I’ll steer well away from our amber national heritage. In fact, I don’t even like wine much. I am a spirits drinker.
When I put it like that, it sounds kind of hardcore. Yeah, I like the hard stuff. Forget your weak, watery beer – mine’s the top shelf. But unfortunately, that’s not quite how it works out. Because while I’d probably get away with a scotch on the rocks or downing vodka shots, my drink preferences are much more embarrassing.
At the pub, when someone buys a round, I usually humiliate myself by asking for a vodka and orange, or perhaps a gin and tonic. Which is inevitably met by a roll of the eyes, as if my mate will be embarrassing himself just by ordering it. And even more rude of me, they’re always more at least a dollar expensive than beers, which means I’m asking others to shell out more money on account of my weakness.
Then, when I drink it, everyone looks sneeringly at the dainty little glass in my hand, with its dainty ice – or worse still, a baby straw and a little slice of orange. It’s desperately uncool. And my attempts to build up its street cred by pointing out that it’s Fatboy Slim’s favourite drink somehow seem to backfire.
My stance really pushes mateship to the limits. After all, the ANZACs didn’t storm Gallipoli beach so we could drink lolly water.
But it gets worse. Ever since I visited Kuletos on King St, Newtown during happy hour as an impressionable 19-year-old, I’ve loved cocktails. Both citrusy or milky, and the more elaborate the better. I’m not really at home in the swanky, beautiful-people-filled surrounds of places like Longrain or The Loft, but the sheer deliciousness of the drinks keeps me coming back. Particularly those drinks with exotic Latin names, like mojitos. I even know my caipirinha from my caprioska.
But what I don’t know is how to avoid being ostracised. Because real men don’t drink delicious concoctions of rum, fresh lime and mint. (Even though they’re much more alcoholic than boring old VB.) And so I remain a social outcast whenever I go to the pub.
I will reverse the anti-cocktail stigma if it kills me. Which it will, probably – coming soon to a pub near you. Specifically, cocktail drinkers need our own Talking Boony to bring the joy cocktails to the masses. And that’s why I’ve performed some radical surgery to my Boony. Next time I go down to the local to watch a one-dayer washed down with a delicious vodka-based concoction, I’m going to take a long a more metrosexual little friend to provide commentary. A Simpering Thorpey, who makes comments such as “Michael Clarke would look great in Armani,” and recommends Glenn McGrath take to the field with a pearl necklace. Take that, beer drinkers.
A column about Thai restaurants
The statistic that a million Australians now live overseas is often quoted these days. And every Christmas, it seems like half of them return to Sydney to regale us of their exciting lives in New York, London and other exotic climes. But for all the amazing experiences they bore us with, like how they flew to Ibiza last weekend and hung out with Moby, or how nightclubs in London have so much better drugs than ours, there are some things they can’t get overseas.
In December and January, our beaches are jam-packed full of pale expat Australian skin alongside the regular pasty Poms, desperately trying to get a tan so they can make their workmates jealous when they get back to London. And even the most desperate-to-impress expat acknowledge that Sydney coffee is better. But the one thing I’ve been finding my overseas-dwelling friends miss about Sydney above all is Thai food.
As a result, I’ve been eating Thai several times a week since mid-December, and each time I’m reminded how lucky Sydneysiders are to be blessed with such an abundance of excellent Thai restaurants. Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook sparked a controversy a few years ago when he declared that chicken tikka masala was now a British national dish. (Which comes as a huge relief to anyone who’s tried other forms of British cuisine.) Australia’s more relaxed about these things, but if somebody claimed pad thai as our national dish, no-one would be likely to disagree with them. Well, outside of Cronulla.
It wasn’t this way when I grew up. I only had my first proper Thai meal at around the age of 16. Suburban Chinese with luminous sweet-and-sour pork was about as exotic as things got in my childhood. But once I’d eaten enough Thai to know my green curry from my masuman, I went crazy – especially at uni, when the combination of flavour and cheapness made it the perennial eating-out option.
The other reason was because Sydney Uni is so close to King St, the undisputed Thai food capital of Sydney. I don’t know what the maximum possible number of Thai restaurants in one street is, but Newtown must surely have passed it. I counted fourteen on King St using the White Pages website, and there were at three I could think of that weren’t even in the list. Although if you’d asked me to guess, I would have said there were around 600.
But one thing concerns me deeply about Sydney’s Thai scene. I fear there may be a decline in the the quality that we all love almost as much as the food. Our Thai restaurateurs are becoming tired from pun names. Or, as they would have said in better, wittier times, Thai-red of pun names.
Glancing down the list of King St’s Thai establishments, there is a distinct shortage of plays on words. Thai Pothong, Thai Jaroen and Thai La-Ong aren’t trying, while Thai Land deserves a fail grade for not even trying. The only establishments waving the flag these days are good old Thai Tanic, Thai Riffic and the very clever Thai Times Nine, which makes no sense whatsoever until you realise it’s at 45 King St – five times nine. Bravo.
I think it’s time the National Trust stepped in. All Thai pun names like Bow Thai, Thai Me Up and Thainatown should be slapped with heritage orders immediately. But I’d go even further. I would insist that all Thai restaurants in Sydney must henceforth be given a pun name.
Some restaurateurs may argue that all the good ‘Thai’ puns have gone. Surely not? But even if they have, one of Sydney’s most acclaimed new Thai restaurants, Spice I Am, in Wentworth Avenue in the city, has shown the way – “Siam”, of course, is the former name of Thailand.
We must all do our bit to preserve Sydney’s unique Thai pun heritage. So next time you go to a restaurant without one, suggest one. (Personally, I’m going to tell Thai Pothong it should change its name to Thai Napple.) We can make it happen – but only if we are willing to Thai.
A column about 2005
At midnight on 31 December, when the City of Sydney Council lights up the naff-sounding pulsating heart it’s putting on the Harbour Bridge to welcome in the new year, I for one will be absolutely delighted to see the back of 2005.
It’s customary at this time of year to serve up a nostalgic year-in-review piece, looking back on all the great moments of the year that was. But to be honest, I can’t think of many. In fact, the year’s been so full of awful moments that Bec and Lleyton’s wedding doesn’t even make the top 20.
So let’s relive some of the doom and gloom, shall we? If nothing else, it will fill us with hope that 2006 couldn’t possibly be as bad as 2005.
We should have guessed it was going to be a disastrous year after seeing it in with Leo Schofield’s giant mirror ball and techno remix of ‘Advance Australia Fair’. Although I have to pay tribute to him for finding a way of making that song sound worse.
But Leo’s mistakes weren’t the worst thing about the year’s beginning, of course. As the year began, we were all in shock from the devastation of the Boxing Day tsunami, whose brutal impact on the region’s poorest and most vulnerable shocked Australia out of its post-Christmas hangover, inspiring us all to open our wallets for something other than slabs and dial-a-pizza. A minute of silence was held at 9pm on New Year’s Eve, and Oxfam volunteers were everywhere collecting – an idea that is sensibly continuing this year, especially given the millions we’re wasting on fireworks.
There were numerous other natural disasters as well, most notably the earthquake in Kashmir that killed than 80,000 Pakistanis, and Hurricane Katrina. Which was followed by the man-made disaster that was the relief effort, exacerbated by the absence of so many National Guard troops who were off dealing with another man-made disaster – Iraq.
Bearing no connection whatsoever with Iraq, of course, is Al Qaeda. Bombings in London and Bali reminded us that the war on terror is far from over, and the attacks on two of Australia’s favourite homes away from home shocked us all yet again.
Our eyes never really left Bali all year, given the drug-related jams many young Australians got into. Schapelle Corby was acquitted by public opinon and the Channel Nine worm – an even more unreliable judge than the ones in Bali, who felt differently. While Michelle Leslie escaped, only to be punished all over again by the Australian media.
Saddest of all was the execution of Van Nguyen, which unleashed a wave of sympathy from the Australian public, and a wave of inflexibility from Singapore. And worse is probably to come with the sad, foolish tale of the Bali 9. Let’s hope that next year, young Australian drug smugglers don’t dare ply their trade in Asia. Or at least do it more successfully.
But it wasn’t exactly a vintage year at home, either. Most importantly of course in sport, where our cricket, rugby union and rugby league teams all took drubbings. It’s a truly bizarre year where the only sporting highlight comes from the Socceroos.
Being such impressively rabid left-wing voters, most readers of this newspaper won’t have been particularly ecstatic about the year’s political developments either. It was a year of a triumphant Prime Minister ramming through legislation despite substantial opposition. The legislation on IR, terror laws, sedition, work for welfare and the sale of Telstra all breezed through, finishing up with VSU, which got through at the last minute thanks to a Family First Senator Steven Fielding who won only 1.9% of the primary vote, and was elected only thanks to Labor preferences. Another brilliantly self-defeating bit of political strategy from the party that was led by Simon Crean.
To cap it all off, Glebe readers had to endure this column every fortnight. So all in all, a horrible year. Let’s all hope that next year is far rosier. And there is some prospect of John Howard’s retirement after ten years in the job, which alone would make 2006 a fantastic year. Yes, even if he’s replaced by Peter Costello. Or even Kim Beazley.
A column about Amex touts
There should be a special circle of hell reserved for the guys who flog American Express credit cards. They are without doubt the most infuriating people working in Australia today, with the exception of everyone involved with Australian Idol.
We’ve all seen them at shopping centres and airports, all had our personal space invaded by them because they were positioned right where we couldn’t help but walk past them, and all been aggravated by their in-your-face, hyperaggressive sales pitch. Honestly, they make Big Kev look restrained.
I’m even starting to see them in my nightmares. There I am, having an ordinary, everyday traumatic dream – you know, one of those ones where all of your teeth fall out, or you have to give a speech in public and realise halfway through that you’re naked – and then suddenly a 20-year-old spiv in a flashy, cheap suit pops up to try and force me into signing my life away. I’m scared to go to sleep.
They simply will not take no for an answer. I was accosted by a smooth young AmEx dude with far too much product in his hair at a shopping mall last weekend, and tried to fend him off by saying “No, I don’t want a credit card.” Which you’d think would settle the matter, really.
But he was far too well-trained for that. He said “No no, come over here.” I demurred, saying I had too many already. He replied, reassuringly, “No, it’s ok, just come here and I’ll show you something.” Honestly, the guy would’ve been a huge success as a flasher.
Of course I was curious about what someone so blatantly flogging American Express credit cards could possibly show me that wasn’t an American Express credit card. So, fool that I am, I walked over to his stand. He immediately pulled out a picture of three American Express credit cards, and said “Which of these credit cards do you have?” I turned away in disgust, saying I was in a hurry, and he followed me. Eventually I had to lie by saying I’d already applied and been knocked back just to escape what had become a textbook hostage situation.
I hate having to lie to a high-pressure salesman. It makes you feel dirty, like you’re the one doing something wrong. When they’re the ones trying to bully you into signing a Faustian pact to fork over massive interest payments until the difficulty of paying your bills drives you into an early grave.
Boy, I’d love to see some of those guys at the pub after work trying to pick up women. I probably should’ve just taken a leaf out of the female playbook and slapped the guy.Memo to all AmEx reps: ‘No’ means ‘no’. Next time I go to a Westfield, I’m packing mace.
AmEx aren’t the only ones. Every November my letterbox is inundated with credit card deals I’ve been “pre-approved” for. So far I’ve received offers from HSBC, ANZ, Westpac and Citibank (twice). And of course my old pals at AmEx, just in case I’d been so traumatised by the shopping centre dude that I’d been lying under my bed, refusing to talk to anyone.
Presumably all these “pre-approved special offers” are supposed to make me feel all special inside, like I’m a high-roller or something. But actually they’re just incredibly creepy, because somehow lots of banks know my name and where I live. Although thankfully there are obvious limits to the violation of my privacy. They clearly haven’t been able to pry into my actual finances, or there’s absolutely no way they’d be offering me more credit cards.
But this Christmas, I’m getting smart. I’m going to cleverly avoid all of these credit card debt traps, and do things the old-fashioned way. I’m going to buy everyone’s Christmas presents on my David Jones charge card, using the convenient Christmas option that’s absolutely interest-free. Take that, AmEx. Well, at least, the David Jones thing is interest-free as long as you pay it off by February. after which it reverts to a very reasonable 21.9%. But I’ll definitely pay it off. I’ve promised myself. And I know I will because even if I can’t find the money, I’ll just get a cash advance on my brand new AmEx.
A column about the Socceroos
I can’t remember ever watching a more enjoyable sporting event than last Wednesday’s win by the Socceroos. I think the main reason it was so very, very good was because we weren’t expecting to win. A sporting victory is always sweeter when it isn’t expected. That’s why the Premiership wins by the Swans and Tigers were so intensely satisfying, as both clubs put aside decades of disappointment to finally taste success. I’m still waiting for the AFL to uncover some evidence, or hear some appeal, that’ll mean the Swans aren’t actually premiers – it’s almost surreal.
Too often in Australian sport, we expect excellence, as our cricketers found in the Ashes series. After a decade of consistently delivering wins, we’ve become addicted to it, and can no longer take pleasure in a series like the current bloodbath against the West Indies. And then there’s the Rugby League World Cup, which I can’t understand why they even bother holding.
But has there ever been a team of underdogs like the Socceroos? For 32 years they’ve snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Even after dominating Uruguay for most of the match, no-one in the pub I was in seemed to genuinely believe they could do it. And when the match went to penalties, we felt another chapter in the annals of last-minute disappointment was being written in front of our eyes. It was the first time in the history of the game that a World Cup place was decided by penalties, and even the most optimistic fan would have tipped the Socceroos to be the first-ever recipients of that most painful of experiences.
And that’s why when John Aloisi netted the penalty that took us to Germany, the joy was overwhelming, almost outrageous. It didn’t seem possible that after years of watching from afar, with our faces pressed up to the glass of the world’s biggest sporting event, most Australians would finally be spared the ignominy of having to follow England.
The pub I was in went crazy, with shocked and delighted patrons embracing strangers and dancing on the table. My friends and I headed down to George St in the hope the fans were going wild. They didn’t disappoint, with hundreds of cars honking horns until late, and happily tipsy fans with curly yellow wigs dancing and cheering in front of traffic. It was awesome.
The scenes reminded me of a magical night in 2002, when my brother and I had braved the basement bar of Cheers to watch the quarter-final between South Korea and Spain. We were surrounded by Koreans in t-shirts saying ‘Be the Reds’, and when the Cup co-hosts somehow sneaked a win on penalties, the bar absolutely exploded onto George St in delight. Korean supporters streamed into the area from everywhere. They stopped traffic, including one poor bus that was marooned in a sea of red shirts for an hour. Internet café proprietors hung speakers out the window to play the team song, and a few brave fans actually started dancing on the roof of the bus. The scene got so out of hand that when the police arrived to try and maintain order, one of the horses bolted, throwing its rider and galloping off towards the QVB.
The most amazing thing about that night, though, was that it took place literally twenty metres from the Spanish Club on Liverpool St. As the heartbroken fans walked out onto the street, many shook hands with and hugged the Koreans. It was a beautiful thing to watch, and it made me very proud that this must be just about the only place in the world where football supporters would embrace, rather than stab on another
And what did South Korea have in common with the Socceroos, apart from a nail-biting win on penalties against a traditional power? Their coach was Guus Hiddink. With a man of his experience encouraging them on, the team dared to believe, and they succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Come next July, that could just possibly be us. And if our master coach can somehow take us to the semi-finals of the world’s greatest sporting event, we’ll all be dancing on top of buses.
A column about being cool
I was sitting with friends at the pub last week, celebrating someone’s 30th birthday with a few quiet, contemplative ales. But just as I was queuing at the bar, somebody drew a gun. Fortunately, though, was made out of pink plastic, and attached to a video game machine, Time Crisis III. It’s a fantastic game, actually – it lets you arbitrarily shoot a lot of terrorists dead, while accidentally slaying a few civilians along the waay. John Howard would like it.
There’s nothing new about the irritating bleeps of electronic machines interrupting your evening’s drinking, of course. And people staring mindlessly into a screen is now a given in any venue with a liquor licence. But I’ve never seen videogames instead of pokies in a pub before. The refitted, renamed Darlington Hotel in Cleveland St, Chippendale, though, has created a mini-Timezone, with pinball, arcade games, and best of all, one of those wacky Japanese photo-booth machines that lets you print your intoxicated, bleary-eyed image on a little sticker, alongside a cartoon kitten.
This discovery made me nerdishly excited, because I am very much of the gaming generation – Princess Peach from Super Mario Bros was my first serious adolescent crush. And although I managed to resist their siren song for most of the evening, and actually talk to humans, I found myself constantly casting longing glances in the direction of the pinball machine.
Most of the trendy pubs I’ve been to would rather redecorate with RSL Club carpet than allow tacky, noisy videogames into their swanky bars. So why has a popular, newly-renovated inner-city pub brought them in? I decided it can only mean one thing: they must be becoming cool. Because it seems that this year, irony is the most fashionable thing of all. Uncool is becoming the new cool.
When you think of ‘uncool’, one name comes to mind: David Hasselhoff. The guy who enjoyed running around with an oiled torso so much that he bought Baywatch when it was about to be axed. The guy who’s a famous pop star – but only in Germany.
But Hasselhoff – or at least, making fun of him – has become the internet’s biggest phenomenon this year. Countless people have Photoshopped him into famous images and emailed them everywhere – it’s become known as “Hoffing”. Only a few hours after the story broke, for example, I got emailed a picture of a shirtless Hasselhoff as a “safety inspector” protecting the entrance the Lane Cove Tunnel hole. Well, it’s better that most spam.
On the crest of his own ridiculousness, the Hoff hosted the ARIAs, and is now even making a Knight Rider movie. So while people are laughing at Hasselhoff, he’s laughing all the way to the bank. I’ll bet Vanilla Ice wishes more people were poking fun at him.
The coolness of uncool is also behind the success of one of Sydney’s hottest new bands, The Presets, who play catchy pop songs constructed from daggy 80s bleeps and dodgy drum machines straight off a cheap Casio. At their live shows, they self-consciously parody early ‘90s rave culture, yelling “go hard or go home!”, and getting the audience to bat giant, Madchester-esque balloons around. And, in a nod to the likes of myself, the videoclip for the album’s first single, ‘Are You The One,’ even has footage of a dodgy 1980s Nintendo boxing game on it. I was so impressed.
I’m delighted by the idea that things that are silly and fun are becoming cool, because I was never very good at the more elegant varieties of fashion. So I’m relieved to learn that we no longer have to pose on stainless steel stools in bars and try to look elegant, but are allowed to go and shoot plastic guns or play pinball in the corner. But it seems that the only thing that’s uncool in this new, ironic, sensibility is to not be laughing at yourself. And if even the hilariously vain David Hasselhoff can do it, anyone can. Now, if you’ll please excuse me, I’ve got an urgent appointment with some digitally-generated terrorists. And I’m no longer ashamed to admit it.
A column about iTunes
At the time of going to press, rumours were flying furiously around about the iTunes Music Store finally making it to Australia on Tuesday of next week. If the rumours are true, by the time you read this, the Inner West’s phalanx of white headphone-toting iPodders will finally be able to legally download music through the software that comes with their stainless steel status symbols. This is momentous news for both the inner-city trendies and the computer nerd community. How momentous? Well, it’s almost as good as if your computer could make you a latte and play Red Dwarf trivia with you at the same time.
If you’re neither one of the Coke-bottle-glasses brigade nor a black skivvy-wearing iPoseur who hangs tough at the Glebe Pt Rd AppleCentre, though, you could be forgiven for wondering what the fuss is about. The iTunes Music Store is the world’s most popular way of legally buying music for your computer. In America, songs cost 99c, and over 500 million of them have been purchased since the service started two and a half years ago. Albums cost only $9.99, which, at current exchange rates, is less than half the $30 we pay for CDs. The songs are automatically copied to your iPod, and can be burnt onto blank CDs. In short, it’s the best way to prevent stealing music. Or at least it would have been if those telltale white headphones didn’t make it so easy for would-be music thieves to just mug iPod owners instead.
It’s been a long time coming, and fans have been disappointed before. There were apparently plans to launch it midyear, and Sony/BMG’s disagreement with Apple was cited as the reason for the delay. I think they should have pressed on regardless – the store’s potential lack of Shannon Noll and Anthony Callea songs is actually a feature.
Why’s it taken so long? Sweden, Austria, Japan and even Luxembourg now have their own iTunes stores. So I can’t understand why Australian record companies have been so narky about all this. On the one hand they constantly complain about how piracy’s hit CD sales, and on the other they make things impossible for the company that’s doing most to promote legal downloading. Sure, Sony’s got its own far more unpopular range of music players, and is probably trying to lock its music into them. But they need to look at the big picture. Because piracy is absolutely rife. It doesn’t just happen through the high-profile offenders like Napster and Kazaa. These days, you can borrow a CD off a mate and burn a perfect copy in a couple of minutes – or just let software like iTunes digitise it for you. Entire TV series can now be downloaded from the internet, and while it’s mostly smut and Star Trek for now, it can’t be long before this starts eating into DVD sales of good programmes.
But the iTunes store is priced so low that it may just save the industry – and not just the music industry. The American store now sells TV shows for a mere $2 shortly after they go to air. And while it seems more humane to force Desperate Housewives addicts to go cold turkey than to allow them to download their fix the next day, the bottom line is that people are paying for content that, whether by downloading or swapping videotapes, they previously got for free. Selling downloadable feature films – the most popular content for illegal downloads as people get faster internet connections – is surely not far away.
Even after years of the industry lecturing us on how it’s wrong to copy things, it’s safe to say that most Australians aren’t too fussed if it’s “just for a mate.” So another way must be found of extracting value from this content. The answer lies in making it more pleasant and convenient to buy legal content. Which is exactly what the iTunes music store does. So when it finally arrives, let’s applaud a victory for common sense. It will lead to the spread of legal, paid-for content in place of the pirated. It may also lead to the dangerous proliferation of Desperate Housewives video clips. But that’s a price I’m prepared to pay.
A columns about Wests Tigers
In case you’ve been avoiding all news sources for weeks because of the clear and present danger of reading about Australian Princess, and have somehow missed the 18,492 other references to it elsewhere in recent editions of The Glebe, the Wests Tigers – or as they are more correctly known, the Balmain Tigers – overcame odds of 150 to 1 to win their first premiership since 1969. Or 1952 if you’re from the wrong half of the joint venture. So it was quite a big deal, with the game on the big screen at Leichhardt Oval a party at the leagues club on Victoria Rd raging on until well into the night – and hangovers raging on for far longer than that.
Sydneysiders love a good sporting bandwagon, usually joining well after it becomes embarrassingly obvious that they’re only interested because a team’s winning. Take the Swans, whom most of us care about only to rub it into our mates from Melbourne. After their premiership, Sydney might actually give the team its attention in 2006, at least until their first loss.
Balmain’s triumph has also started a massive bandwagon of its own, so I’m not going to pretend I’ve been a fan since birth, whose first words were “Wayne Pearce”. Embarrassingly, I grew up supporting the not-exactly-mighty North Sydney Bears, and since they were shafted by the Sea Eagles, I haven’t paid much attention to the game other than at Origin time. All the fuss about a joint-venture club winning made me think every Tigers fan should be grateful they didn’t have to merge with those silvertail scum from Manly.
I did go to a Tigers game a few years ago with a friend who’s usually the loudest person yelling abuse at Leichhardt Oval. (And is yet to utter the word “Wests” when talking about his beloved team.) Remembering the game – and just as importantly the pub crammed full of black and gold afterwards – makes me think that the reason so many people got behind the Tiges this year is because they’ve reminded us what’s best about rugby league. Particularly after the Bulldogs have done so much in recent year to showcase what’s worst.
The game is a tribal, suburban one. It’s about the ground down the road from your house where you grew up, the local leagues club where you learnt to play the pokies, and coming together with your mates to support your team and hate Manly. And that’s why Super League was such a disaster. It took the game to a bunch of people who didn’t give a stuff about it at the expense of people who did. Really, the Adelaide Rams? Western Reds? They actually paid someone to think up that strategy?
But we are talking about a game with so little understanding of its fans or its own nature that the Rabbitohs had to go to the Federal Court before the team with one of its proudest histories and biggest fanbases was actually allowed back into the competition. It still hasn’t entirely recovered from the people who half-killed it in order to save it. You can’t tell me people in the Illawarra like having to support the Dragons. And even today, I’ll bet more people care about the Newtown Jets than the Melbourne Storm.
With all the mucking around by its administrators, it’s taken a long time for the code to win its way back into the hearts of Sydneysiders. Balmain’s win may be the turning point. The team that still means something in its own community, and plays the majority of its games in the suburbs it came from. They won over the whole of Sydney, reminding us all why we fell in love with the game in the first place. So congratulations, Tigers, for the against-the-odds success story of the year. And who knows? If they can keep thrilling Sydney like this, the game may actually survive. Let’s just hope Manly doesn’t.
A column about the Valhalla cinema
Sydney’s film community has taken a body blow in the past month, with two of the already small number of inner-city independent cinemas closing their doors. The owners of Glebe’s Valhalla cinema and the Chauvel in Paddington have found that the challenges of DVD and an ever-increasing number of multiplex screens have made things too difficult. And with DVD-quality pay-per-view movies now available on Foxtel Digital, and even higher-quality home viewing options like HD-DVD and BluRay on the way, you can see why they’ve decided that the odds for smaller cinemas managing to bring in audiences would be roughly the same for a new Police Academy sequel.
Like many people in the area, I suspect, this news made me feel guilty, because while I was a regular visitor to the Valhalla in the 1990s, I haven’t been there for years. And it’s not like we didn’t have any notice it was in trouble – it’s closed several times before. So why did we all abandon a neighbourhood icon in its times of need? While DVD’s an easy villain to point to, I suspect that the answer’s actually more complicated.
The anaemic state of Australian film is another obvious culprit. Cinemas like the Valhalla have traditionally been the industry’s main venues, and now they’re suffering from its inability to turn its subsidies into a half-decent film. And you can’t blame audiences for declining to trust Australian filmmakers again after so many years of abuse. The audience are once bitten, twice shy – and badly bitten if they’ve been to recent flops like Nick Giannopoulos’ The Wannabes, or Strange Bedfellows, in which Paul Hogan and Michael Caton pretending to be gay for tax purposes was apparently as bad an idea as it sounds.
There’s also been a convergence between mainstream and arthouse cinema. Nowadays even a movie about wine snobbery like Sideways can get wide release. This is partly due to the increase in screens – with 12, Hoyts Broadway has plenty to devote to smaller films – but also a broadening of mainstream taste. Even subtitles aren’t the disincentive they once were. Take the Hong Kong screwball martial arts comedy Kung Fu Hustle. In years past, its Chinese language and scenes of dancing, axe-wielding, dinner suit-wearing triads would have seen it relegated to cinemas like the Valhalla. But it had quite a wide release last month, and is still playing at George St and Broadway.
Conversely, Palace Cinema’s screens in Leichhardt and Paddington now show Hollywood films, which would have been anathema to arthouse proprietors in the past. Their Norton St cinema is currently screening Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, and I seem to remember that Paddington even showed a Star Wars prequel. But the great thing is that because it’s a multiplex, it’s also currently hosting the 2005 Greek Film Festival. Although it may not be necessary (the French Film Festival, for instance, sells out), the commercial films can subsidise the indie films. Which is why it’s such great news that Norton St is planning to add four more arthouse screens. And if they have to take some of Hoyts’ revenue to make a profit, Kerry Packer will cope – he owns a casino.
I don’t mourn the arthouse films that once screened at the Valhalla so much, because they’ll find a home elsewhere. What I miss is its heyday as a repertory cinema, screening classic and cult films. More specifically, I miss the amazing posters they used to print with the upcoming months’ schedule. My parents used to wallpaper our house with them, and their programme used to be brilliantly diverse, from the highbrow French pretention of Godard all the way to the schlock horror puppets of Peter Jackson. And you could always get a cheap combo ticket with “Jaffas to roll down the aisle”.
Melbourne has the Astor cinema, which still prints a programme like the old Valhalla’s, right down to the wonderful posters. They’re screening an old Valhalla favourite, 2001, this month, and it’s tragic that Sydneysiders – and kids in particular – can no longer see these kinds of movies on a proper screen. Because the experience is very different – it’s the difference between seeing a painting and its postcard. A big screen completely immerses the viewer, allowing you to enter another world. Whereas no matter how fancy your new-fangled plasma is, you’re still in your boring old lounge room.
So let’s hope that the consortium that’s currently trying to buy the Valhalla and turn it into the Sydney Screen Centre succeeds (retaining the old name, given the blandness of the new one) and succeed in once again making the old Val a showcase for the best cinema history has to offer. The programme needs to be interesting enough to get us out of the house, sure, but if the success of DVD proves anything, it’s that people like watching old movies. So let’s hope audiences actually remember the joy of seeing old movies at the cinema, and support it. Because rolling Jaffas along my lounge room floor just isn’t quite the same.
A column about Grand Theft Auto
A few weeks ago, the Office of Film and Literature Classification took the extreme step of refusing the classification of a videogame, forcing it to be withdrawn from sale. And not just any videogame – they banned Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, a best-seller which is widely viewed as the greatest game ever made, with the possible exception of Hungry Hungry Hippos.
The reason was a hidden ‘feature’ nicknamed ‘Hot Coffee’ which allows players to simulate sex with a naked woman. The usually progressive Hillary Clinton was the first to jump on the bandwagon, presumably to redefine herself as family-friendly ahead of a possible tilt at the White House. She was soon joined by virtually every politician in the US, spawning an inquiry in the Federal Trade Commission. As a result, publisher Rockstar Games has seen its share price plummet. In Australia, Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock went after it with the fervour he usually reserves for malnourished asylum seekers. All in all, the world hasn’t suffered such a scurrilous attack on its very moral foundations since it briefly glimpsed Janet Jackson’s nipple.
I downloaded a video of this outrageousness – purely in the interests of warning The Glebe’s readership about this threat to their families, of course. And I’ve got to say, of all the raunchy videos circulating on the internet, this must be just about the tamest – the main character doesn’t even take his clothes off. I’ve seen more graphic action on Big Brother Uncut.
That said, children definitely shouldn’t be playing this game. But that’s not because of the poorly-animated woman with whom you can have consensual relations if you – ahem – push the right buttons, so much as everything else in Grand Theft Auto. If the wowsers want to fuss about inappropriate content, why not the scenes where the game gets you to commit drive-by shootings, blow up FBI agents, and even start a massive gang war? I’ve been playing GTA for a few months, and while it’s incredibly entertaining, the criminal action makes Scarface and Goodfellas look restrained, sometimes shocking even my thoroughly corrupted mind. But for our moral guardians, the one thing that crosses the line is clumsily-simulated sex? Now that’s twisted.
The GTA fuss highlights the massive double standard between the censors’ treatment of sex and violence. You’ll never see anything close to full-frontal nudity in a Hollywood film, but there’s no end of bodies being full-frontally riddled with bullets. And even the slightest hint of sexuality is enough to restrict films to ‘mature’ audiences. So when a film is given an ‘R’ rating, 16- and 17-year-olds aren’t allowed to watch on the screen acts they can legally perform in private.
The selective censorship of GTA teaches young people that it’s fine to go on a virtual killing spree for their own entertainment, but the moment you spend a little quality time with your digital girlfriend, there’s trouble. Shouldn’t we be encouraging young men who are interested in guns and violence to instead develop healthy relationships with the opposite sex?
But no. In the Bush era of abstinence education, the US Government will happily interfere with the moral choices made by near-adults, but refuses on principle to interfere with anyone who wants to own a gun. It seems to me far more appropriate for governments to direct their efforts away from forcing moral judgements onto teenagers, and onto interfering pretty darn extensively with anyone who wants to own a gun. After all, becoming sexually active is a normal part of growing up – whereas very few people go through the rite of passage of spraying innocent bystanders with bullets.
I’m not going to defend ‘Hot Coffee’. The whole idea of a simulated sex game is pathetically frat-boyish, really, and it was irresponsible of the game’s developers to include it as a hidden feature, rather than allowing parents to make their own decision. But I simply cannot understand why the OFLC views a bit of simulated slap and tickle as so appalling an evil that it won’t risk the game being sold to anyone, even adults. (And you know something’s really immoral when the politicians won’t even let you buy it in the ACT.) The fuss over ‘Hot Coffee’ is just a storm in a teacup.
A column about pokies
This newspaper has recently reported on the decline of the live music scene in the Inner West. Dwindling crowds and increased council regulation have made it hard for local venues to survive. This is a blow not only to the area’s residents, but also to the entire Australian music scene, because the Inner West has always fostered new talent. Strange as it may seem, Woollahra and Bellevue Hill haven’t made quite as distinguished a contribution to the history of Australian music.
The scene was particularly vibrant in the 1990s, when bands like You Am I, The Whitlams and The Cruel Sea were cutting their teeth in the area’s pubs. Inner West references even appeared in their lyrics – I’ve always particularly liked the couplet “Had a scratch only you could itch, underneath the Glebe Pt bridge” in You Am I’s Purple Sneakers, and that band also have the distinction of being the only group ever to namecheck the “470 to Circular Quay.” A little further south is Tim Freedman, who is more or less the Poet Laureate of Newtown, and once wrote a song called ‘God Drinks At The Sando’. It’s not known whether he was referring to himself.
I don’t go to many gigs these days, not so much as a result of the scene’s decline as my own into stay-at-home boringness. But I had a great experience a few months ago at a great pub that still has free bands, the Rose of Australia in Erskineville, where I stumbled on a brilliant gig by Jodi Phillis and Trish Young from another much-missed Inner West band, The Clouds.
They aren’t the only ones keeping the flag flying. Venues such as the Annandale Hotel and Balmain’s Cat and Fiddle are persisting with live music, and so is Sydney Uni’s Manning Bar, at least until voluntary student unionism comes in.
Another problem reported in The Glebe recently has been the vexatious issue of people vomiting on the pavement, as opposed to the place most patrons choose, the pub bathroom floor. I was disappointed to read that there have been complaints from local residents. As far as I’m concerned, if you decide to move next door to a pub, you are voluntarily agreeing to step in the evidence of someone’s youthful exuberance. You are also consenting to being kept awake by loud music, knock-and-runs and the dulcet tones of inebriated hoons kicking your fence in. And in return, the pub supplies you with convenient access to pokies. What a bargain.
While we’re on the subject of pokies, it’s fairly clear that the main reason for the decline of live music has not been draconian council restrictions, but publicans focussing their efforts on getting a different kind of punter through the doors. A report found that in 2004, publicans made a staggering $60,000 profit per machine, so it’s hardly surprising that our publicans are installing them more quickly than 19-year-olds can scull Bacardi Breezers.
You can hardly blame landlords for taking advantage of their license to print money, though. (To be precise, their second license to print money on top of their near-monopoly on selling alcoholic drinks.) I’d rather blame the government that decided the most socially responsible place to put gambling machines was in places where people consume drinks that cloud their judgement.
While it seems reasonable to allow responsible adults to choose how they waste their money, the problem with putting pokies in pubs is that their patrons make that choice when they’ve drunk enough to temporarily reduce themselves to the decision-making level of a toddler. The pokies tempt us with their alluring flashing lights and little dancing Egyptian pyramids right when we are at our most vulnerable, unable to remember anything clearly except our PIN numbers.
If the government was serious about stopping people from getting hurt when inebriated, they’d augment the drink-driving laws with a ban on drink-doubling up. Pub pokies are a far greater social ill than a few kids being sick on the pavement.
A column about Big Brother
This year’s Big Brother housemates have become infamous for not wearing clothes much. But as The Glebe recently reported, housemate Tim has been wearing a Newtown Jets t-shirt. Channel 10 refused to say whether Tim lived locally when The Glebe’s reporter called, but because I know him personally, I can reveal that he is indeed is a proud Chippendale resident. It’ll soon become obvious, anyway – he’ll no doubt make guest appearances at every RSL bingo night in the area.
Not that it’s hard to pick him as a local. For one thing, he’s a journalist, billed as the ‘intelligent’ housemate. For another, he looks like he spends most of his time hiding from the sun in activist bookshops. But the biggest giveaway, of course, is that he’s a rabid fan of trade unions. Now, I know the revolution is alive and well within a 2km radius of Gould’s Book Arcade on King St, but really, where else but the Inner West can real-life lefties still be found in the wild?
Given his vocal political stance, I thought Tim would be about as popular with the voters as his beloved Labor Party. But since being nominated in the first week, Tim has become strangely popular. Not only have the bigger boys stopped hogtying him and dumping him in the diary room, but he hasn’t come anywhere near being nominated again. But the real shock came last week when I learned that Centrebet was rating him as favourite to win.
So how has a pale-skinned politico become the strongest contender in Australia’s biggest popularity contest? Well, it all comes back to his Inner West heritage, which has given him one huge advantage over all the other housemates: Tim has done his time in the trenches – or more accurately, the terraces – and has become an expert in sharehousing. And surviving Big Brother is child’s play after years of surviving quirky flatmates, mung beans and antique plumbing.
Sure, the TV house is not quite the same as your typical Inner West terrace. The housemates’ main contact with moisture comes via the pool and spa, not rising damp, and the BB house seems to have some strange design of garden that doesn’t involve weeds, empty longnecks and cigarette butts.
But ths same skills apply. Share houses teach you to get along with an extraordinary diversity of people. And while there are personality differences in the Big Brother house, it’s nothing compared to your average Newtown terrace – after all, there isn’t a single hippie, Goth, or pretentious philosophy student.
As a result, the tensions are kept relatively low. No-one has commandeered the lounge room to form an indie band or experimental theatre troupe. No-one has stuck up aggressive signs in the bathroom insisting that housemates not flush the toilet to save water. And no-one’s bringing home bizarre bedmates that force other housemates to make awkward conversation the following morning, or at least try not to stare at their piercings.
The communal food situation is also much easier for the Big Brother contestants. There aren’t any vegans, which means no-one has to pretend tofu isn’t inedible. And while the housemates are occasionally forced to survive on ‘staples’, a meal of rice and tinned tomatoes would be a luxury to many of this area’s tertiary students, who would kill for any meal that isn’t two-minute noodles.
There are some hygiene issues in the BB house. Some housemates regularly refuse to clean up, and they’re constantly running out of toilet paper. For Tim, though, this situation would be normal. Most share houses in the area are only just starting to wash up after Christmas dinner.
The other strains of the Big Brother house – the heated arguments, bitching and constant sexual tension – would be a walk in the park for Tim after years spent living in Chippendale terraces. So it’s no wonder that the housemates and viewers alike have warmed to his relaxed, humorous approach. With this much popularity, Tim may not only win Big Brother, but could easily be drafted into the ALP leadership. He’d certainly win more votes than Kim Beazley.
A column about Twenty20
Last Monday’s 20-over international between Australia and South Africa, the first to be held in this country, was nothing short of magnificent. The largest-ever cricket crowd at the Gabba was thrilled by the batting pyrotechnics, and so were the punters in the pub I watched it in. The excitement level was so high that, for the first time ever, the bar staff actually turned down the crappy dance music so we could hear the commentary.
As far as I’m concerned, we can abandon 50-over cricket, because Twenty20 matches deliver on its promise better. They’re like VB Series highlights packages – all sixes and wickets, and minimal dour blocking.
Best of all, they only go for 3 hours, which is the perfect length for a television audience – when was the last time anyone actually got to see all seven-odd hours of a one-dayer from the sofa at home, without the inconvenient intrusion of work, family and the rest of everyday life?
The only problem is the nickname situation. It’s not a bad idea, but someone desperately needs to supply some wittier options. Especially for Damian ‘Marto’ Martyn, Simon ‘Kat’ Katich and Nathan ‘Bracks’ Bracken, who deserves to be kept on the sidelines by the selectors until they can come up with better nicknames. They should look to the captain – Ricky ‘Punter’ Ponting’s moniker references not only his surname but also his gambling problems as a younger man. It’s brilliantly embarrassing.
And if we’re going to put cricketers’ humiliating personal problems on the back of their shirts, it’s a real pity Shane Warne’s retired from that form of the game. Although they might not have been able to get him a big enough shirt.
You can take the nickname thing too far, though. Michael ‘Mr Cricket’ Hussey’s nickname is not only far too flamboyant for a player who’s not even really a regular yet, but dares to usurp Richie Benaud’s rightful title. Perhaps it was meant ironically?
If Twenty20 has cut out all the boring bits of one-day limited overs cricket, perhaps other dull sports should to adopt the same approach? Most of us who endured all 200-plus minutes of the Socceroos’ World Cup qualifier would probably agree that we could have skipped straight to the ten minutes each way of extra time, and then the penalty shootout.
Similarly, basketball matches could be decided entirely by a slam dunk competition followed by one of those competitions they hold at half-time where you have to shoot from halfway.
Other sports may need to introduce physical changes to increase the excitement level. Aussie Rules is brilliant on a smaller ground, as we see when Essendon play the Swans at North Sydney Oval in the pre-season each year – it’s only about two kicks from one goal square to another. And how exciting would if it was only one?
But the sport that would really benefit from a smaller ground is rugby league, which is only really interesting when one team’s pressing against another’s tryline, so perhaps the ground should be reduced to in length? That way one team would always be about to score a try. And if we made the try-lines much wider, they’d cross far more often.
Come to think of it, all you’d need to do to improve league would be to play across the width of the field instead of its length. The crowds would flood in.
And imagine how much more exciting one of those 15-minute long 1500 metre swimming races would be if they started at the 1400 metre mark? Or the marathon started just outside the stadium?
There are some who may argue that these changes would ruin tradition. But if those people had to endure days and days of dour South African batting varied only by rain delays, as those who attended the recent Sydney Test did, they’d be entirely convinced.
I say that the future of sport is here, and its name is Twenty20. Or, as the Aussie team have probably nicknamed it with their usual level of wit, Twentoes.