Claymation Manboob

Ten years ago i wrote a tune called 'Captain Manboob', expounding the goodwill adventures of a superhero whose weapon of choice was a mammoth set of breasts, housed in pink spandex, adorned with yellow cape and menacing standard issue hockey mask.

The Manboob anthem was 99% Fat's early showstopper, the culmination of our early 35 minute sets at Skabar, regularly accompanied with by the visual spectacle of our mate Jim circumscribed in hot pink lycra, showering the first few rows in beer . (Thanks again to the lovely Nae for the laborious sewing and ongoing mending of that fine, one of a kind costume).

As these bones and britches get older, relics from the past seem to pop up with fury from out of nowhere to thrust me back into a world of nostalgic reflection.

I was thrilled to find recently that our old buddy Al, of Al and Bushy fame (iconic Melbourne ska fans circa 1999 - 2004) has stuck up a project from his animation course years ago on YouTube.

The claymation visual accompaniment to the Captain Manboob tale.

For posterity, and nostalgia...enjoy...

World of Pure Imagination

"A little nonsense now and then is cherished by the wisest men"

Sarah brought home 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' from Staples the other day and we spent a sultry humid Friday night in bed drinking red wine, eating Italian chocolate, reliving childhood memories as a storm barrelled wildly over our Queens roof.

Willy Wonka made my world go round when i was a boy. I would sit engulfed in my Nana Barb's floppy brown bean deficient bean bag in her suburban 1970's lounge room, entranced by her faux-wood Tecnhicolor TV on wheels, rabbit ears protruding from the top, indulging in a session of Wonka for the utmosth time via a 'cutting edge' VCR. It had a remote control that only worked when its cord was 'plugged in'. Infrared, evidently, was still a way off.

I was five years old on those lazy afternoons of carefreedom, falling away into my own little world, pretending that i too had discovered a golden ticket and was travelling through the mysteriously wonderful world of Wonka.

Miniscule detail remained firmly entrenched in my long term memory, triggered again my the repeat viewing. The quips and catchlines, the colour of the sweets, the empathic sensation of licking fruit flavoured walls, crunching my own teeth into an edible dandelion cup and saucer. The songs and lyrics, the Candyman, the freaky knife merchant at the gates of the factory, the cockney science teacher who berates Charlie for eating just two wonka bars.

It was a revelation to discover that the film was set in Munich - not cockney London as i'd thought, despite the majority of American accents dominating the cast.

It was all there, all the memories, flooding back like a chocolate river through the pure imagination of my still youthful mind.

We sailed off into slumber, wined up, singing the songs of Wonka, dreaming dreams about shooting across skies in glass elevators.

So thanks to the man in purple, and his little men in orange and green.

This imagination is once again truly free.

Woodside

Sean Ogs. Literally next door to our apartment block. Goes off on a Friday night. As i write this, Irish boozers are unleashing a rough rendition of 'Here i go Again' by Whitesnake and it filters with fury through our front flywire window. The craic is mighty.

Entourage Woodside

With a great sense of thrill I discovered the entire season Five of Entourage on the net and spent the better part of a lazy Sunday afternoon indulging in the entire 12 episodes back to back. Few television shows have the same powerfully addictive qualities as Entourage: the episodes are short and sweet, the urge to receive more and more vicarious hits of the Hollywood existence becomes too much to resist and suddenly you're left with the very real sensation that you're in on the deal, frequenting site shoots and scanty blonde Malibu beach parties, livin the dream, pimpin' fo shimpin'.

Entourage was an institution in our Fitzroy house at the time right before Pete and i dropped our Melbourne lives and hightailed to South East Asia. We'd taken to drinking a lot of 'Chang' beer in preparation, a Thai import that we later found was akin to Bangkok VB, and the arbiter of a particularly potent and frequently regrettable variety of hangover, known around Thai tourist hotspots as 'Changover'. Pete and i would down sixers of Chang on the cack green felt Slam Palace couch, getting lost in the indulgent, penis-friendly world of Vinny Chase, Johnny Drama, Turtle and E, rarely feeling any desire to to return make the depressing trek back to the alleged real world.

When my first stint of graveyard shifts began at the hostel around that time, i found myself crawling out of bed around 6pm, tucking into 4 episodes of Entourage over either dinner or breakfast (sometimes both, due to the dualistic, confused nature of my smashed nocturnal body clock), sit at a check in desk for eight hours, prevent English and Irish goon swillers from destroy the joint between 11 and 7, indulge in four more episodes of Entourage exhausted and wired...sleep, rise, rinse, repeat.

Aside from the promise of impending international liasons and adventure, Entourage was the lifeforce that kept me going through this weird period. Soon enough, Pete and i were free men, hellbound for a whirlwind stint through one of the craziest sectors of earth, then onward to London and the US respectively.

"Make it big, you bastard", Pete would frequently demand. "Make it big, so i can ride your coat tails and pimp it so we can LIVE LIKE ENTOURAGE".

The dream has yet to be realised.

It wasn't just a nostalgic reminder of good times past nourishing myself with season Five this recent weekend - I actually discovered I was closer to the wonderful, alluring world of Vinny Chase than i thought. You see, Episode 12: "Return to Queens Boulevard" was filmed not only in the haunts and streets of this Woodside neighbourhood, but Vinny Chase's mum lives in a red roofed weatherboard box house thirty seconds from my door on 41st Drive, there are shots of the gang traversing the 61st station steps where i tread every day, a shot where they cross the cafe window in which i am typing this, and down Roosevelt Av to my right under the LIRR ovepass sits the Station Cafe Pub, the site of 'Johnny Drama's' neon-signed dive bar.

With knowledge that the brothers Chase, et al hail from these very same Woodside streets, the undesirable divide between my vicarious fantasy world and sense of reality just got shaved down to within a pimp's inch.

I may not yet have made it big in order to support the delusional world of my Chang-swilling travel-pal/uncle, but you gotta start somewhere...

As sun spills over the Roosevelt and Woodside X intersection, the streets of box weatherboards soak, tree lined and bustling, and the 7 line roars and slices into Grand Central on the steel corridor across the heart of the hood, i sip my coffee proud, take it all in and in my mind declare:

I am Queens Boulevard...

Bacchus Beats Pigasus

Dear Folks,

We're back in business. Sorry for the lack.

Though the Pugwall expose was a tough one to follow up, it wasn't the sole reason for my week-long absence.

Last Sunday I copped a hit of Swine Flu. Not officially, but this is what i'm telling people, and it makes a better story this way.

Thankfully, like Rupert Grint from Harry Potter, I was able to nip it in the bud with a weeks worth of sleeping, dozing and indulging in bad American television.

Still feeling the influence of the swine as late as yesterday, instead of staying home sniffling and feeling sorry for myself i honoured my inner Bacchus, frequented the Cuckoo's Nest for eight hours and drowned the swine out with Jameson.

It seems to have done the trick.

Meanwhile, the swine continues to linger in multiple pockets of the world. Thankfully, the real flu, ie - the fear, has slowly dissipated; i dare say we're all better off, though, perhaps not as well off as Baxter and Glaxo who sensibly shipped out all that Tamiflu well before the public stopped soiling their dacks in panic.

As 'regular run of the mill non-pig' flu continues to knock off between 250,000 and 500,000 people a year worldwide, at last some sanity and truth has chimed in to balance out the rampant hysteria of prior months.

Here is a little dig i wrote on the Swine back in its early stages.

Expect more diatribes and nuggety minutiae this week and beyond, courtesy of a de-swined writer armed with enthusiastic vigor for life post a forced week on his white ass.

Swine Flu 0. Dool 1.

Pugwall

There was a day when the sun shone brightly over Ringwood, billy-carts were fashioned and careered down steep suburban hills and Hey Hey It’s Saturday was years away from getting the ass from its revered 6.30pm Saturday Night timeslot.

Before ‘Round the Twist’, ‘Ship to Shore’, and ‘Saturday Disney’, ‘Pugwall’ and ‘Pugwall’s Summer’ were the best things an seven year old could tuck into on a given afternoon. It was also the closest thing Australia ever came to the moronic yet strangely addictive ‘Saved By The Bell’. (If you were wondering what ever happened to Screech, check this out.)

Lead singer-guitarist of fledgling suburban powerhouse ‘The Orange Organics’, Peter Unwin George Wall, aka 'Pugwall' was a regular suburban dude like you or me - a dude with a dream. Beset by painful sister Marmaloid, douchebag old man Hero Head (played to a tee by Ken James) as well as obligatory villains Con and Wazza, Pugwall overcame the odds of suburban hardship to realise his rock and roll dream.

Not the most attractive fella, nor a very good singer, Pugwall’s virtue lay in the fact that he seemed a pretty decent bloke, wailed reasonably on his cheap red Washburn copy, and got chicks, namely Jenny, the Organics permed lead singer, tambourine beater and sole sex appeal.

I don’t remember a great deal about Pugwall. I remember thinking it was awesome, and that being in a band would be sweet. Perhaps this early indoctrination was the eventual catalyst for my own musical exploits.

Notable memories include the brutal opening tune, sounding uncannily like the demo song on my 16 key Casio keyboard, as well as the cameo of a confused looking Molly Meldrum singing the Organics praises at some awards night at the closing stage of the series.

The Organics were a hell of an outfit. With huge bottom end courtesy of Stringbean and Orfo on bass and tubs and Bazza on flashy Roland Key-tar, Jenny and Pugwall were well backed up in their quest to make it big.

In real life, the dream was not so easy for Pugwall actor Jason Torrens, striving for similar success as drummer for Melbourne-based hard rockers Bugdust. The Orange Organics were always going to be a tough act to follow.

Ultimately, Pugwall had a dream and he made it. He had a chance. He took it.

It was an inspiration to us all. These were good days.

Coffee Fail

As an astute individual once affirmed, ‘in America you can buy bucket-sized cups of coffee in any flavour you like other than coffee-flavour’.

I recall a story from a bloke with whom I used to kill the lonely hours of my many hostel graveyard shifts. He was a seasoned world traveller and had found himself stuck with a North American female, who after dragging him kicking and screaming to a generic Starbuck-esque coffee sweatshop, ordered herself a ‘lite Hazelnut Mocha-Frappa-chino with cream, three pumps of chocolate and the order to brew this abomination to precisely 160 degrees’.

At any respectable café back in Melbourne, it is part of a self respecting barrista’s job to punch people who think this is acceptable. Contempt on principle aside, when you start depth charging thickened cream and shots of chocolate into your morning cup you can pretty much forget about your drink being ‘lite’. Semantics won’t shed your muffin top.

This tirade of choice encouraged by sweat-shop caffeine peddlers renders the transaction less about enjoying good coffee, and everything about how sugary and sweet you can bastardise an otherwise fine, reasonably healthy beverage.

As the reign of Starbucks and equivalents have come to soil the earth, the more I empathise with Frasier and Niles Crane’s dad Marty. I, too, hate what 'they’ve' done to coffee.

I had anticipated that New York might be different, that there might be hope for America in the heart of its most bustling, most diverse city, that lady liberty might burn her torch not just for the disenfranchised and impoverished, but for desperate lovers of a good cup. I had envisioned that contrary to the hopeless predicament rife throughout the rest of the country (barring certain precincts of the West Coast), fine, blood-coarsing, aromatic, delicious coffee might be discovered, downed and lived by daily.

My optimism was foolish.

With the exception of a handful of spots - Cafe Angelique in Greenwich Village (former haunt of the Fab Four in their heyday), and a cosy wood floored Hipster crib in Willamsburgh, most of the coffee I’ve come across has been arse awful.

Weak and watery, quantity over quality, a thousand combinations of possibility and rarely a sensation of happiness at the end. Certainly very little feeling of prolonged stimulation. If not sweet, cream dripped and foaming, then it’s weak as black piss.

A good coffee can make or break your day. The variations on what makes it good from great, tolerable from terrible are subtle. Coffee making is a complex, applied art requiring human skill. Relying on a machine to churn out decent brew before mutilating it with cream product is recipe for a good slapping.

A good morning coffee must be blacker than pitch, muddier than Irish bog. It should grab you by the beans, make you buzz and erupt internally on that first divine mouthful. If black, milky warmth doesn’t singe like a river of dark, hot zeal through your veins, then you may as well throw it away, or at someone.

I miss Melbourne coffee, a place where coffee is never ‘plain’, and rarely is there ever a terrible one. So many mornings in the States I have craved a strong flat white and instead been forced to sit multiple rounds with a filthy drip filter. It has been tolerable, but my heart longs for what it knows and loves. The coffee of home. The real deal.

Thankfully my old lady came to the rescue yesterday and sent over my new pride and joy, an Italian Stainless Steel stovetop number.

It might only make a cup at a time, but that one cup has more power than an entire pot of drip feed and leaves me wired for the better part of the day. You can keep your drip feeds and your frappa-crappa-moka-loka-lite-white-tight-delite hot jizz in a jumbo cauldron. I’m all about the quality and the extent to which it makes your eyeballs buzz.

Wake up America. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Get some decent, dignified, unabashed Joe in your system and learn about it

Grizzly Adams

People have commented en masse that I resemble Glaswegian actor Gerard Butler.

One arvo a few weeks ago I walked out to buy juice:

Woman: “Man, did you see that guy” (to me)
Man: “What?”
W: “That guy….he looked like….oh you know…that guy….you know what I mean, ‘Spartaca’ or whatever..”
M: “Oh….Spartaca? Spaaartacaaa! Yeah… maybe you’re right”.

True, I am hairy like animal and bear some relevance to the Scotsman. Being even half- confused for a ripped Scottish lawyer known for a role as an oiled up warrior King is not a bad predicament to be in.

My beard is largely the catalyst for these generous comparisons, and has reached fairly epic lengths of late. Frothy drinks and crumbs from food struggle to wangle free from a forest of multi-coloured, borderline-public facial follicles. Thanks to the cheerleading and sanction of my Midwestern-bred girlfriend, there is no shaver in sight.

We watched ‘Urban Cowboy’ in bed last night (one of her favourites) and I have reason to believe she is stealthily transforming me into Bud Davis, the mechanical bull riding Texan played by John Travolta.

Travolta and Butler are not ugly men.

We’re heading to Minnesota to live in a cabin in the woods for a month come August and this beard will only grow in strength and might.

Here are Ten more fine reasons to keep the bad boy growin' from the Bureau of Bigger Better Beards