At last, my chance to become immersed within a world of unabashed arts-wankerdom. The pair of fat, black-rimmed specs I purchased last month would enter their prime – my ticket to blend chameleon-style in with the highest of the brow, the leftest of the wing, the bookfest literati at the annual Melbourne Writers Festival. I would schmooze and survey, eye off proceedings and breathe in literature, poetry, and intellect on tap. I would drink verses and prose up like aged wine and rich port.
Oh the virtues of a highbrow existence.
It would come via a catch - somehow I was to be a technical go-to man for the venue’s sound requirements. I would be riding the sound desk and thrusting microphones in front of assorted notable literari so that their words of deep thought and reflection might be heard by all. Despite my experience amidst the shadiest of rock pubs and live music venues over the years, I could not be deemed a sound engineer. I have not a tat, a piercing nor a single pair of cheekhugging black jeans; I wash daily, I shave occasionally, and I yet to suffer the wrath of tinnitus. On top of all this, I am partial to a loss of bowel when I glance an eye over a sound desk, wondering deeply what all the little knobs do, like an overexcited twelve year old boy visiting the cockpit of a jumbo jet for the very first time. Visually, characteristically and vocationally, I am an ambitious choice to be put in charge of acoustic logistics for this highbrow event.
I stare on behind the sound desk in a halogen lit, wooden floored Malthouse theatre bagging room. It hits me how I regularly seem to find myself in the most unlikely of situations. At first seeming like any other moment, chameleons in their own right, blending seamlessly with the continual video reel of my life narrative. Then the mind adjusts, punctuates the video reel and comes to its senses. The scene before me deserves recognition as something out of the ordinary. In this otherwise empty room I watch on as Clive James and a sensual, sequined ring-in called Kathy dance the tango before my eyes, the two of them swirling and smoothing ever so sultrily together in sync across a gleaming dance floor. As I tweak the sound desk knobs to enhance their latin soundtrack, my mind is forced to admit the true bizarreness of the situation before me. I am engineering sound. For Clive James. So he can dance the tango with a gorgeous exotic woman. I drink the moment up. A trickle of festival punters crawl silently into the theatre to witness the impromptu performance. He frowns deep in concentration, momentarily displaying glimmers of a Sydney-born lad that had not yet breathed the soot of London, gently manhandling about the room this intoxicating minx at least half his age. He divulges that Kathy is akin to driving a Porsche 9/11. Kathy informs Clive that he is an excellent driver. There is the return of a familiar, perhaps distant quiver of life for Clive down south.
I continue looking the part in my fat rimmed specs and pretend to know what I am doing. I am no sound man, and have much to learn in the ways of arts wankerdom.
I am the multitasking chameleon.
Oh the vitues of a highbrow existence.
26.8.07
29.7.07
Bargearse R.I.P
26 May 1928 - 27 July 2007
He came. He ate. He farted profusely.
This weekend, the world mourned the loss of Australia's finest crime-fightin', beer-swillin', fashion curtailing, kipper devouring senior sargeant of all time.
Bargearse lit up our prime time screens (and thankfully not his brutal flatulence), with immortal moments, titles like "Where's me bloody Donuts", "Where's me bloody Dim Sims" and the unforgettablly gripping "Where's me bloody Chips". An avid ambassador of the Dutch Oven, bargearse made our world a safer, more c02-beaten place to live and breathe.
Bargearse - Rest in dutch Peace.
18.7.07
Why the Rodent gets up my Goat
My bespectacled eyes gaze up toward our regal, amber-lit Treasury building, its palm trees still and damp amidst a sheen of freezing chill. Upon the outskirts of a city that hasn’t yet pulled itself out of bed, a tram clacks and rumbles - the only sign of life short of a lone Sri Lankan courier on the other side of Spring st. He’s got baked goods. I want baked goods. He could be from Bangladesh. Possibly India.
It occurs to me that this is not important.
I twist my scarfed-to-the-hilt neck up to my right. At the top of the treasury steps, puncturing the darkness, luminous rays of showbiz light drench a familiar looking political-type in a suit. It appears to be Kev Rudd, cock of the walk, the people’s man, the bloke who would be Prime Minster conducting a live to air interview. I stare up at Rudd’s manboy face and out of the blue am hit with an irrational urge to conduct a Benny Hill style noggin slappin’ and/or wedgie of the atomic persuasion on our would be PM. I ponder how an electorate might warm to Rudd being blinded on national television from to Y-fronts being stretched from the back of his ass to the hair of his chinny chin chin. I refrain. I kinda like Rudd, and in many ways I have no choice but to like him, because ultimately I really, tremendously loathe the alternative.
Since his inception as national leader John Winston Howard has always found himself firmly up my goat, and recently I’ve forced myself to examine exactly why this is. Sometimes it’s all too easy to find yourself adrift in a conditioned state of loathing for this particular rodent. Perhaps it’s to do with a lingering feeling of disappointment from that night in ’96 when PJK’s Zegna-panted rear was turfed from office, replaced by a pragmatic, unconvincing and unlikely goose. Though a young lad of just 12 years, i dug Keating’s charismatic sass, his gall and chutzpah and soft spot for the Arts. Understandably I was duely unimpressed with the stale, regressive alternative, and it’s something I’ve never been able to shake. Howard managed to get away with branding Keating an arrogant elitist for having a greater picture and sense for the truth than him, and this I failed to dig.
For over decade now, a plethora of reasons for me loathing this rodent have amassed and congealed into a thick, hearty anathema for which he shall never be rid. The extinguishing of Native Title, castration of a Reconciliation process and the election-stealing lies about refugee children being thrown into the sea began to sow the seeds of my discontent. Then came the refugee detention camps, Iraq, our unquestioned suckholing of the American establishment and a myopic, ideological drive to embed our once humanitarian beacon of a nation into the United States’ imperialist, warmongering agenda. For using fear to control a populace, for using race to divide, for lying and lying when caught out about it. We may be governed by a government of many but the leader is responsible for setting the measure and tone of a nation. It is here where the man’s true colours have shown. A measure too short, a tone too mono and a colour too white.
For these reasons and more I chose not to atomically wedge Kevin Rudd on national television. I think we're going to need him.
The other alternatives have come and gone throughout the years. Beazley’s one and only moment of glory arrived and went when he ate a whole chicken in Question Time after using it to debunk Howard’s GST proposals. Crean was…Crean. Latham never eased enough squeeze for my taste, though anyone who candidly describes John Howard as an ‘arselicker’ and his cabinet a ‘congaline of suckholes’ deserves a partial credit for audacity. So it comes down to our man Rudd. Cock of the walk, or just a cock? And would voting for a sprightly cock be any better than voting for a fatigued goose?
This self-asserted pundit argues a fervent ‘yes’. And when the day finally arrives, a newly toned and measured country may sigh a fresh breath as the rodent and his congaline are sent packing, dancing back into the white dust-lined annals of history.
12.7.07
High Eight Us
Hiatus.
Spiffo word that one. Say it a few times in a row, say it few more after that, and as the syllables start to roll off your tongue with rabid haste, it just sounds plain weird. However the word hiatus is central to the following confessional.
It has come to my attention through esteemed colleague in literary shadiness, Buckmaster that it has indeed been not one, not two, but THREE long months since my last blog posting. Quite frankly, I was dumbfounded as to this revelation. Where on earth had these three months gone and how had I managed to ferret them away with little to no attention to the continuity of the juicy minutiae of life? I was certain that life had gotten no less juicy - colder perhaps, but still swarming, bulging thick and rife with minutiae of the juiciest blend. It seemed that time had simply gotten away, eluding me as I got comfier and comfier dozing away on my laurels, jamming the time choc full with certain nondescript ferreting. I’d neglected the breakfast and the dog that laid claim to it, and though critically undernourished, it lives. Let it be known that Time as the bringer of death itself has failed to achieve its ultimate expression in this regard. The Death According to Dool? A premature prognosis, surely. The extended, accidental hiatus according to Dool? Quite possibly.
For the sake of pedantic clarity do not be confused into thinking that I have contracted a three month natural fissure, cleft or foramen in a bone or other structure (thanks Dictionary.com). The hiatus that I refer to is this very break in the continuity of the work, series and action – this here dog’s breakfast compendium, this précis gospel on life itself.
For posterity, I declare this accidental hiatus over and hereby enact a new chapter in the life and times of the Doolblog.
A fresh fisting of juice, a smorgasbord of minutiae, a fat fried literary breakfast and a brand new juiced up dog to go with it.
Spiffo word that one. Say it a few times in a row, say it few more after that, and as the syllables start to roll off your tongue with rabid haste, it just sounds plain weird. However the word hiatus is central to the following confessional.
It has come to my attention through esteemed colleague in literary shadiness, Buckmaster that it has indeed been not one, not two, but THREE long months since my last blog posting. Quite frankly, I was dumbfounded as to this revelation. Where on earth had these three months gone and how had I managed to ferret them away with little to no attention to the continuity of the juicy minutiae of life? I was certain that life had gotten no less juicy - colder perhaps, but still swarming, bulging thick and rife with minutiae of the juiciest blend. It seemed that time had simply gotten away, eluding me as I got comfier and comfier dozing away on my laurels, jamming the time choc full with certain nondescript ferreting. I’d neglected the breakfast and the dog that laid claim to it, and though critically undernourished, it lives. Let it be known that Time as the bringer of death itself has failed to achieve its ultimate expression in this regard. The Death According to Dool? A premature prognosis, surely. The extended, accidental hiatus according to Dool? Quite possibly.
For the sake of pedantic clarity do not be confused into thinking that I have contracted a three month natural fissure, cleft or foramen in a bone or other structure (thanks Dictionary.com). The hiatus that I refer to is this very break in the continuity of the work, series and action – this here dog’s breakfast compendium, this précis gospel on life itself.
For posterity, I declare this accidental hiatus over and hereby enact a new chapter in the life and times of the Doolblog.
A fresh fisting of juice, a smorgasbord of minutiae, a fat fried literary breakfast and a brand new juiced up dog to go with it.
11.4.07
Down on the Corner
Trendies traipse the footpath past cafes, bars and expensive salons. Old Greek men linger, smoking cigarettes in zippered loafers and blue wool slacks, whilst elderly ladies push pleather shopping carts over cobbled gutters. Faded department storefronts speak languidly of consumerism’s past, their interiors now at odds with the reputations of the golden era that spawned their inception.
Smith St is gritty and raw, grimy and real. It is a veritable melting pot of characters and lives, Collingwood’s rich heart and tainted soul.
On the corner of Moor and Smith sit the Aborigines. They lounge with longnecks of VB and Draught, parked at the benches under the leafy trees, each day losing their minds to the drink and repeating it all the next. This corner is their turf. Sitting around, seeing out their sombre days, wasting in numbers, together under that tree.
Washing away their lives with the grog.
One afternoon down at Smith St Safeway Liquor I joined the queue of people waiting to purchase their booze. Directly in front of me a dark frizzy haired woman tipped one of her VB longnecks off the bench, averting a floor smash with a swift last minute catch. The woman made a bit of a commotion. She turned to face me.
“Lucky I caught that one ay?”.
The woman was quite tall, full lipped, roughly middle aged and visibly indigenous. I recognised her from the corner. She got talking to a blonde girl ahead of me, and occasionally glanced behind to include me her chat. She’d been drinking heavily and talked at us with a husky thick voice, but not in a threatening manner and hardly overbearing. The richness and candour in her voice drew me into her words and cradled my attention. She reeled off jive, something about how she’d been here earlier, what her fella was up to, how she needed to get the grog back to her mates on the corner. The blonde girl seemed a little cautious, and the store attendant behind the counter eyed subtly to see where the security guard was. I made some small talk with the woman and she went on to dominate the chat.
“Buried me brother today…gunna drown me sorrows a bit”.
She informed me matter of factly that her brother had been stabbed to death in a backstreet in Preston five days earlier.
With little repose, she presented to me a picture she’d been holding. It was a blown up police photograph of an old grey haired fella sitting cross-legged and handcuffed on a kerb, flanked by two indigenous women and a couple of officers.
“Not a bad shot is it ay?!”, she asked with relative enthusiasm.
She began to sway her head gently from side to side, noting the two ladies in the shot.
“These are me sisters”.
She directed my attention to one of the ladies.
“…Lost her last year”.
She pointed to the older man in handcuffs, parked helplessly in the gutter.
“Lost ‘Im few months ago as well”
I stared into the sadness permeating her deep brown eyes, bagged and welling. She pointed to the other woman in the photo.
“Can’t afford to bloody lose her”, she stated with pity, her tone amazingly measured and more reflective than remorseful.
I was taken aback, transported to another world. I continued staring into her eyes. They were nothing but hazy wells of sadness and sorrow; in looking through them, I saw into her life. It was full of pain and sadness, routine tragedy and the acceptance of misery. The death of her brother was just another ‘fuckin’ one of ‘em dying’. Like the others, she would accept it. And as she had done before, she would drink these longnecks to drown and forget.
Most days I still walk past the corner slightly unsettled and wary. I dislike that I feel this way. There’s normally about fifteen of them, young and old, bound in alcoholic solidarity, a united clan. They belch out yelps to disarrayed mates over the road, all the while imposing an unmistakable presence and shady vibe on the whole street. The trendies and elderly stick out like sore thumbs, and so do i. Through a five minute booze purchase at the local supermarket, I gained an amazingly emotional insight into a world I’ll never have to be in, know, or endure. I felt deeply for the woman, wondered what must go on in her head, wondered how she deals with the ongoing sadness in her life, and the lives of those around her that sit by the corner day after day. I understood then how important it was for them all to stick together, to rock in the same boat, present a united front and get through life with arms linked. All they had was each other, and none of them could afford to lose anyone else. I’ve crossed that street before to avoid the confrontation. I hate that fear could do that to me, and refuse to cross anymore. I don’t fear these people. They are me. I love these people. I hate that they have to be there every day drink away their humanity. I hate the emptiness and sorrow that I saw in that woman’s eyes. I hate that she had to bury her own brother that day and lose another family member and friend to her adverse existence. I hate the hopelessness of the situation.
The Smith Street corner is just a microcosm of a much bigger theme, our collective failure to imagine and empathise on a grand scale, to have a go at sensitively righting some enormous wrongs committed in our past, however frought with emotional difficulty such an undertaking might be, however steep the upward slope. To acknowledge that we are bound together in humanity and do what needs to be done.
"It begins, I think with that act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to us. With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds. We failed to ask, how would I feel if this were done to me? As a consequence, we failed to see that what we were doing degraded us all.”
- Paul Keating. Redfern Address 1992
Smith St is gritty and raw, grimy and real. It is a veritable melting pot of characters and lives, Collingwood’s rich heart and tainted soul.
On the corner of Moor and Smith sit the Aborigines. They lounge with longnecks of VB and Draught, parked at the benches under the leafy trees, each day losing their minds to the drink and repeating it all the next. This corner is their turf. Sitting around, seeing out their sombre days, wasting in numbers, together under that tree.
Washing away their lives with the grog.
One afternoon down at Smith St Safeway Liquor I joined the queue of people waiting to purchase their booze. Directly in front of me a dark frizzy haired woman tipped one of her VB longnecks off the bench, averting a floor smash with a swift last minute catch. The woman made a bit of a commotion. She turned to face me.
“Lucky I caught that one ay?”.
The woman was quite tall, full lipped, roughly middle aged and visibly indigenous. I recognised her from the corner. She got talking to a blonde girl ahead of me, and occasionally glanced behind to include me her chat. She’d been drinking heavily and talked at us with a husky thick voice, but not in a threatening manner and hardly overbearing. The richness and candour in her voice drew me into her words and cradled my attention. She reeled off jive, something about how she’d been here earlier, what her fella was up to, how she needed to get the grog back to her mates on the corner. The blonde girl seemed a little cautious, and the store attendant behind the counter eyed subtly to see where the security guard was. I made some small talk with the woman and she went on to dominate the chat.
“Buried me brother today…gunna drown me sorrows a bit”.
She informed me matter of factly that her brother had been stabbed to death in a backstreet in Preston five days earlier.
With little repose, she presented to me a picture she’d been holding. It was a blown up police photograph of an old grey haired fella sitting cross-legged and handcuffed on a kerb, flanked by two indigenous women and a couple of officers.
“Not a bad shot is it ay?!”, she asked with relative enthusiasm.
She began to sway her head gently from side to side, noting the two ladies in the shot.
“These are me sisters”.
She directed my attention to one of the ladies.
“…Lost her last year”.
She pointed to the older man in handcuffs, parked helplessly in the gutter.
“Lost ‘Im few months ago as well”
I stared into the sadness permeating her deep brown eyes, bagged and welling. She pointed to the other woman in the photo.
“Can’t afford to bloody lose her”, she stated with pity, her tone amazingly measured and more reflective than remorseful.
I was taken aback, transported to another world. I continued staring into her eyes. They were nothing but hazy wells of sadness and sorrow; in looking through them, I saw into her life. It was full of pain and sadness, routine tragedy and the acceptance of misery. The death of her brother was just another ‘fuckin’ one of ‘em dying’. Like the others, she would accept it. And as she had done before, she would drink these longnecks to drown and forget.
Most days I still walk past the corner slightly unsettled and wary. I dislike that I feel this way. There’s normally about fifteen of them, young and old, bound in alcoholic solidarity, a united clan. They belch out yelps to disarrayed mates over the road, all the while imposing an unmistakable presence and shady vibe on the whole street. The trendies and elderly stick out like sore thumbs, and so do i. Through a five minute booze purchase at the local supermarket, I gained an amazingly emotional insight into a world I’ll never have to be in, know, or endure. I felt deeply for the woman, wondered what must go on in her head, wondered how she deals with the ongoing sadness in her life, and the lives of those around her that sit by the corner day after day. I understood then how important it was for them all to stick together, to rock in the same boat, present a united front and get through life with arms linked. All they had was each other, and none of them could afford to lose anyone else. I’ve crossed that street before to avoid the confrontation. I hate that fear could do that to me, and refuse to cross anymore. I don’t fear these people. They are me. I love these people. I hate that they have to be there every day drink away their humanity. I hate the emptiness and sorrow that I saw in that woman’s eyes. I hate that she had to bury her own brother that day and lose another family member and friend to her adverse existence. I hate the hopelessness of the situation.
The Smith Street corner is just a microcosm of a much bigger theme, our collective failure to imagine and empathise on a grand scale, to have a go at sensitively righting some enormous wrongs committed in our past, however frought with emotional difficulty such an undertaking might be, however steep the upward slope. To acknowledge that we are bound together in humanity and do what needs to be done.
"It begins, I think with that act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to us. With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds. We failed to ask, how would I feel if this were done to me? As a consequence, we failed to see that what we were doing degraded us all.”
- Paul Keating. Redfern Address 1992
25.3.07
Old Balls and Weddings
I turned a slab the other day and for the first time ever I feet that I’m getting on a bit in this life. I reckon twenty five will probably yield an even deeper sensation of ‘old balls’, but twenty four really does feel a little strange. It’s all good. At 24, you’ve still got license to act like a goose if the opportunity presents itself, a license that in truth, probably doesn’t expire until 30 at least. Maybe the license never expires. Maybe I’ll keep up the goose act well until my dwindling years, when I one day search into the mirror and find that I’ve metamorphosed into one massive wrinkle. A wrinkly old goose with old balls. Bring it on. I’ll still be having fun. Complaining about the temperature of my soup, whacking people in the shins with my walking cane, playing the Benny Hill tune while I repeatedly slap my own balding nut. It’s going to be great.
Coinciding with my slab birthday was the marriage of my good mates Evsy and Rebsy, the second couple in our tight school friendship group that have succumbed to the glory of matrimony. This event contributed in making me feel a little older. Various events have marked this progression over the years. First it was the twenty first parties and the consecutive months of free piss and good times. Then it was an engagement, a bucks nights, the marriage of Bartletts, and now a union of Winstanleys. That’s two of the fellas down…one begs the question as to who might be next.
Anyway, age be buggered. The wedding on Saturday was a truly awesome and rocking day. I worked the 7.30 shift in the morning and could barely contain my excitement at the large day ahead. I suited up, not in the baby blue safari number that would have led to my castration at the whim of the bride, but a suit that normal people would wear. I startled most of the backpackers at work in my uncustomarily dashing threads. The day kicked off well. I sat in the audience and ogled the bridal party as they trundled magnificently down the aisle of the Arts Centre pavilion, all suits and blue dresses, gracing the stage in a frontline of unity. Big Evs beamed as his new bride’s big brown eyes made their way down the red carpet. I’d never seen the man so relaxed. He would explain this later at the reception – how on earth could he be nervous when they loved each other so damn much. I sat and spectated on as another two of my great friends declared with candour their undying love to each other. We all looked on, our little family of friends, and beamed reciprocally at the frontline. Love swelled and permeated the room. I was left with nothing but warmth in my heart and a shiteating grin to boot.
After a warm, succinct ceremony, we took some photos, drank some juice, mocked Wibo’s tie and laughed at Corno’s busted arse shoes. I indulged in the usual sparkling borax with Buckmaster, caught up with the gang, got prepped for a big day. The girls looked a treat. We began to smash piss at Bear Brass, and after a couple of hours of liver priming, made our way through the chilly city streets to the swanky Park Hyatt. Wak dissonant horn harmonies filtered out from megaphones perched near the Yarra and offered an unsettling Tim Burton eeriness. The Park Hyatt was A-grade swank. All polished timber and marble. Beers were offered by men with trays, not to mention little balls of risotto salted to perfection. We found our seats and struggled to go through a single glass of wine without a member of Hyatt staff topping it up with fervour. Wibo would remark how quickly he was getting pissed, and the commencement of random headbutting was a visual cue as to the level of his inebriation. The food was delicious, the plonk plentiful. All the fellas talked shite, everyone mingled and proceeded to have a blast. Table six and table nine formed a ’69 union’ and stuck it up the collective arse of inferior table ten. MC Dipper really made the night a special one, providing the perfect balance of sparkling repartee, ceremonial duty and light humour. Dip made it real, and truly was the master of this ceremony.
The circular room was decked out Bollywood style. Behind ornate archways and flower laden pillars, the bridal party sat at the head of the round polished dancefloor like royalty. We shook our clackers in the Bollywood vein, but i struggled to keep up and probably looked more like i was doing the nutbush. In red satin gown and pointy, light tan slippers, Big Evs looked like the Sultan of Brunei. Rebs, adorned with bling and glamorous in matching red was his Queen. We rocked out to Bollywood dancing, we drank litres of booze, the night seemed like it would never end. Bruno Grollo was there.
Whitey and I liberated a bottled of black label from the bridal table and shared it around. Memories towards the end became more fleeting, more difficult to encode into long term memory. But it was undeniably a magnificent and wonderful night. I was inspired by the love that Evs and Rebs were sharing, the dedication that they’d made to each other, this huge decision they’d made to be united forever.
We kicked on and lapped up the extra hour thanks to daylight savings windback and after waking up in a strange bed at a random, unfamiliar house at roughly 4.30am, I slapped my two-tone shoes on blistered, squished feet, thrilled to find that I was only a few streets away from my house.
Another marriage down, another milestone, and another marker of our progression through life. Next it’ll be the thirtieths, the increasing conception of little tackers, the cycle of life accelerating, and all the joys that come with it. Congratulations Evs and Rebs, I can’t contain my tremendous happiness for you both. Thanks for an awesome night. And sorry for pinching your black label.
Coinciding with my slab birthday was the marriage of my good mates Evsy and Rebsy, the second couple in our tight school friendship group that have succumbed to the glory of matrimony. This event contributed in making me feel a little older. Various events have marked this progression over the years. First it was the twenty first parties and the consecutive months of free piss and good times. Then it was an engagement, a bucks nights, the marriage of Bartletts, and now a union of Winstanleys. That’s two of the fellas down…one begs the question as to who might be next.
Anyway, age be buggered. The wedding on Saturday was a truly awesome and rocking day. I worked the 7.30 shift in the morning and could barely contain my excitement at the large day ahead. I suited up, not in the baby blue safari number that would have led to my castration at the whim of the bride, but a suit that normal people would wear. I startled most of the backpackers at work in my uncustomarily dashing threads. The day kicked off well. I sat in the audience and ogled the bridal party as they trundled magnificently down the aisle of the Arts Centre pavilion, all suits and blue dresses, gracing the stage in a frontline of unity. Big Evs beamed as his new bride’s big brown eyes made their way down the red carpet. I’d never seen the man so relaxed. He would explain this later at the reception – how on earth could he be nervous when they loved each other so damn much. I sat and spectated on as another two of my great friends declared with candour their undying love to each other. We all looked on, our little family of friends, and beamed reciprocally at the frontline. Love swelled and permeated the room. I was left with nothing but warmth in my heart and a shiteating grin to boot.
After a warm, succinct ceremony, we took some photos, drank some juice, mocked Wibo’s tie and laughed at Corno’s busted arse shoes. I indulged in the usual sparkling borax with Buckmaster, caught up with the gang, got prepped for a big day. The girls looked a treat. We began to smash piss at Bear Brass, and after a couple of hours of liver priming, made our way through the chilly city streets to the swanky Park Hyatt. Wak dissonant horn harmonies filtered out from megaphones perched near the Yarra and offered an unsettling Tim Burton eeriness. The Park Hyatt was A-grade swank. All polished timber and marble. Beers were offered by men with trays, not to mention little balls of risotto salted to perfection. We found our seats and struggled to go through a single glass of wine without a member of Hyatt staff topping it up with fervour. Wibo would remark how quickly he was getting pissed, and the commencement of random headbutting was a visual cue as to the level of his inebriation. The food was delicious, the plonk plentiful. All the fellas talked shite, everyone mingled and proceeded to have a blast. Table six and table nine formed a ’69 union’ and stuck it up the collective arse of inferior table ten. MC Dipper really made the night a special one, providing the perfect balance of sparkling repartee, ceremonial duty and light humour. Dip made it real, and truly was the master of this ceremony.
The circular room was decked out Bollywood style. Behind ornate archways and flower laden pillars, the bridal party sat at the head of the round polished dancefloor like royalty. We shook our clackers in the Bollywood vein, but i struggled to keep up and probably looked more like i was doing the nutbush. In red satin gown and pointy, light tan slippers, Big Evs looked like the Sultan of Brunei. Rebs, adorned with bling and glamorous in matching red was his Queen. We rocked out to Bollywood dancing, we drank litres of booze, the night seemed like it would never end. Bruno Grollo was there.
Whitey and I liberated a bottled of black label from the bridal table and shared it around. Memories towards the end became more fleeting, more difficult to encode into long term memory. But it was undeniably a magnificent and wonderful night. I was inspired by the love that Evs and Rebs were sharing, the dedication that they’d made to each other, this huge decision they’d made to be united forever.
We kicked on and lapped up the extra hour thanks to daylight savings windback and after waking up in a strange bed at a random, unfamiliar house at roughly 4.30am, I slapped my two-tone shoes on blistered, squished feet, thrilled to find that I was only a few streets away from my house.
Another marriage down, another milestone, and another marker of our progression through life. Next it’ll be the thirtieths, the increasing conception of little tackers, the cycle of life accelerating, and all the joys that come with it. Congratulations Evs and Rebs, I can’t contain my tremendous happiness for you both. Thanks for an awesome night. And sorry for pinching your black label.
19.3.07
Facial Hair and Waterfights
I was fossicking around my hoard of personal effects and computer files the other day and came across a whole bunch of old shite.
Anyway, i thought you cats might like to take a trip down my memory lane.
The year is 2005, i'm living in the laundrette, the overseas trip is still a vague pipedream, and life is swell...
19/10/05
Some would say that twenty-two is no age to be complaining about.
Despite the increasing sense that the weeks appear to be slipping by at Spaceball-esque ‘ludicrous’ speed, there is much to be happy about in the newfound clearing of early twenties country. The mindless years of incapacitated brain function and non-stop wasted naivety have begun to trail off into nostalgia terrain just as life becomes a little less hazy, and finally after all these years of patience you manage to grow some decent bloody facial hair. That’s all I ever wanted back in year twelve, some thumpin-ass sideburns like my mates Chode and Dipper, and that jock named Dogga who got recruited to play senior school football because he resembled the combination of (a) a 25 year old brick shithouse, and (b) Sasquatch. Alas, my coming of age years were spent with dismal attempts at any sort of facial styling, burdened with a smooth baby-arse face and subsequently very little visible masculinity. But now I’m 22, and there’s scratchy, unkempt, crazy hair all over the shop. I am man, and you best hear me roar!
You’d think I’d be happy about all this, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s all just a little bit too little too late, that the novelty has worn off. Four years down the track, I really couldn’t give a rats clacker about the state of my hirsuite-ness, especially considering I never really shaved my sideburns once the first side patches of hair became visible, and now that they’ve grown out a bit they look like an Advanced Hair transplant from my pubic region. Sideburns - no, ‘Mingeburns’ - perhaps, or maybe ‘Sidepubes’ – there really isn’t much ‘burnin’ going on at all - hardly the lush, rugged rockstar strips I’d craved all those years ago. The hair dream was not as I’d dreamed but rather a whole lot of hassle for very little return – hair that could have been brought to my attention and probably cherished four years ago, but is now just a forlorn mish-mash of half assed goatee and Sideminge.
A bit of an anti-climax.
Still, I shouldn’t complain - at least I fared better in pubescent development than Tom, my Grandfather, who’s diminutive stature throughout high school caused him to be perpetually donned ‘the Mouse’. Although, I should add that puberty finally hit him with gusto at the age of eighteen, shooting him up 3 feet and prompting his chums to elevate his nickname to ‘Mouse King’. A rags to riches story if ever I’d heard one - in a swift few months of pubic fury my ‘pappy was a monarch. Thankfully, I was no mouse, nor any sort of mouse royalty – mine was a relatively smooth, hiccup free transformation, granted, more akin to the mouse extremity than the Sasquatch.
Its one thing to finally feel like a hairy man after all this time, another thing to realise that you aren’t getting any younger, that your rate of hair growth seems to be permutating in direct correlation with the increased responsibilities of ‘adulthood’.
So it was refreshing last Sunday on the first really hot day before summer, to take a mental vacation back into the mindset of a sweaty thirteen year old, and pelt a large group of neighbourhood pre-pubescents with an commanding artillery of waterbombs. All it took was one bomb to smack the side of one kid’s head before the street below our second story balcony was littered with thirty random ten-year-olds, eager to be hit next and retaliate in turn. The bombs flew back and forth for a good three hours, and our mate Dodgy Rogers hooked up a catapult system that proved demoralising for the pre-pube army. Ahh it was great.
For half a day my mates and I felt like kids again, reliving the carefree era when jumping through the front yard sprinkler and declaring war with water were the orders of the day, and shaving your face was still a good seven years off.
Eventually, the cheap water balloons from the local two dollar shop ‘Crazy Price Everything’ became scant, and Suzy the old Greek lady across the road started yelling “you bloody kids, bloody” and began throwing small rocks at our opposition in a bid to deter them from her water supply. The kids were right to be afraid of Suzy, because she ain’t no dreamboat, she’s hairier than me, and frankly, water bombs are funny and rocks just hurt a whole lot. Surrender was inevitable.
The battle was won, albeit through an extraneous Greek ally, but the war had only just begun, and this was comforting to know. For, as long as the water bombs keep being pelted, and youthful reminiscence comes back every now and again to pay a visit, no amount of facial hair will ever let me forget how to have fun like I did when I was a kid, nor force me to take the rigours of adulthood too seriously - not even if I get to be as hairy as Suzy.
Anyway, i thought you cats might like to take a trip down my memory lane.
The year is 2005, i'm living in the laundrette, the overseas trip is still a vague pipedream, and life is swell...
19/10/05
Some would say that twenty-two is no age to be complaining about.
Despite the increasing sense that the weeks appear to be slipping by at Spaceball-esque ‘ludicrous’ speed, there is much to be happy about in the newfound clearing of early twenties country. The mindless years of incapacitated brain function and non-stop wasted naivety have begun to trail off into nostalgia terrain just as life becomes a little less hazy, and finally after all these years of patience you manage to grow some decent bloody facial hair. That’s all I ever wanted back in year twelve, some thumpin-ass sideburns like my mates Chode and Dipper, and that jock named Dogga who got recruited to play senior school football because he resembled the combination of (a) a 25 year old brick shithouse, and (b) Sasquatch. Alas, my coming of age years were spent with dismal attempts at any sort of facial styling, burdened with a smooth baby-arse face and subsequently very little visible masculinity. But now I’m 22, and there’s scratchy, unkempt, crazy hair all over the shop. I am man, and you best hear me roar!
You’d think I’d be happy about all this, but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s all just a little bit too little too late, that the novelty has worn off. Four years down the track, I really couldn’t give a rats clacker about the state of my hirsuite-ness, especially considering I never really shaved my sideburns once the first side patches of hair became visible, and now that they’ve grown out a bit they look like an Advanced Hair transplant from my pubic region. Sideburns - no, ‘Mingeburns’ - perhaps, or maybe ‘Sidepubes’ – there really isn’t much ‘burnin’ going on at all - hardly the lush, rugged rockstar strips I’d craved all those years ago. The hair dream was not as I’d dreamed but rather a whole lot of hassle for very little return – hair that could have been brought to my attention and probably cherished four years ago, but is now just a forlorn mish-mash of half assed goatee and Sideminge.
A bit of an anti-climax.
Still, I shouldn’t complain - at least I fared better in pubescent development than Tom, my Grandfather, who’s diminutive stature throughout high school caused him to be perpetually donned ‘the Mouse’. Although, I should add that puberty finally hit him with gusto at the age of eighteen, shooting him up 3 feet and prompting his chums to elevate his nickname to ‘Mouse King’. A rags to riches story if ever I’d heard one - in a swift few months of pubic fury my ‘pappy was a monarch. Thankfully, I was no mouse, nor any sort of mouse royalty – mine was a relatively smooth, hiccup free transformation, granted, more akin to the mouse extremity than the Sasquatch.
Its one thing to finally feel like a hairy man after all this time, another thing to realise that you aren’t getting any younger, that your rate of hair growth seems to be permutating in direct correlation with the increased responsibilities of ‘adulthood’.
So it was refreshing last Sunday on the first really hot day before summer, to take a mental vacation back into the mindset of a sweaty thirteen year old, and pelt a large group of neighbourhood pre-pubescents with an commanding artillery of waterbombs. All it took was one bomb to smack the side of one kid’s head before the street below our second story balcony was littered with thirty random ten-year-olds, eager to be hit next and retaliate in turn. The bombs flew back and forth for a good three hours, and our mate Dodgy Rogers hooked up a catapult system that proved demoralising for the pre-pube army. Ahh it was great.
For half a day my mates and I felt like kids again, reliving the carefree era when jumping through the front yard sprinkler and declaring war with water were the orders of the day, and shaving your face was still a good seven years off.
Eventually, the cheap water balloons from the local two dollar shop ‘Crazy Price Everything’ became scant, and Suzy the old Greek lady across the road started yelling “you bloody kids, bloody” and began throwing small rocks at our opposition in a bid to deter them from her water supply. The kids were right to be afraid of Suzy, because she ain’t no dreamboat, she’s hairier than me, and frankly, water bombs are funny and rocks just hurt a whole lot. Surrender was inevitable.
The battle was won, albeit through an extraneous Greek ally, but the war had only just begun, and this was comforting to know. For, as long as the water bombs keep being pelted, and youthful reminiscence comes back every now and again to pay a visit, no amount of facial hair will ever let me forget how to have fun like I did when I was a kid, nor force me to take the rigours of adulthood too seriously - not even if I get to be as hairy as Suzy.
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