talk of the town

(from last week, sorry) I have enlightened beliefs on the matter of the Melbourne Storm rorts because I have no interest in whatever the kind of ball game it refers to, to the degree that I gather it’s about rugby league (I assume ‘NRL’ stands for ‘National Rugby League’ though if someone told me it was a league of Rugby Union players I would not be shocked) but what that actually is (in relation to rugby union or whatever other lemon-shaped ball games there are that aren’t AFL) I don’t know at all.

It would seem that Melbourne Storm, which is a team, found ways to pay certain players more than they should have, to keep the team successful, which it was.

The bit that most intrigues me was the suggestion that some of the people responsible for this deception and corruption might go to jail for up to five years. That is amazing. I am really torn. If I were king they probably would go to jail, but then again, I might be sending people to jail just for being interested in rugby league, or perhaps I’d be a benevolent ruler and only send them to jail for thinking it’s important (they can still be interested). Certainly I would outlaw people paying for the services of players. I would also send the woman in the seat perpendicular to mine, to jail for the crime of filing her nails in my presence. Unbearable vibes of a scratchy pink board on a fingernail and rude, too.

Anyway the idea that people might go to jail over something to do with a stupid ball game that makes no sense is very amusing. It shows to some degree that our society is simply cockamamie, though at the same time I would be totally into people who made their money out of in some way organizing the playing of stupid ball games going to jail. You see how this presents me with a moral dilemma.

As it happens I also don’t really believe sending people to jail is a solution. In jail they no doubt learn about more sports and are encouraged by their corrupt peers to take greater interest in intricacies of ball games. It is a vicious circle. Or, if you like, cycle.

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Next vignette: Oh I used to work with a designer, this was at Attic Press, who used to call vignettes ‘vonettes’, I mean she probably spelt it vignette, but she didn’t know how to pronounce it. She always came at it as if explaining a new concept too, the vonette, something very specialized that only she had knowledge of. I can’t remember what it referred to in design and nor do I now care. I am then reminded of the woman I worked with who pronounced mural ‘muriel’ and foccaccia ‘f’couchy’. The muriel problem is, I think, fairly widespread: in this person’s case, it was as if she actually was unable not to make the ‘i’ sound between the ‘r’ and the ‘e’. The f’couchy was just laziness I think. It was a new innovation (as innovations so often are) in Sydney 20 years ago, and like Kylie Minogue and Kate Ceberano, people had a lot of trouble pronouncing the name for some time. There was the transition period when people had actually learnt how to say it, but put a kind of affectation in their voice as though only an affected person would know how to say such a word. Then people realized life was too short and just started saying the damn word.

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Last night we watched what was probably about 2/3 of the Drew Barrymore-directed film Whip It. I have to say what we saw was pretty poor, though like a lot of these things it probably wasn’t our demographic. I have been trying to think of ways that it might have turned out to be a brilliant film following the scene where the boy and girl jump in the swimming pool with their clothes on (as far as I’ve seen it or will ever see it probably). My first impulse is always to imagine the actors turning to the camera and explaining why the film has been rubbish so far, but of course that’s a cop out. I suppose the best idea I can think of is that somehow the film moves away from its boring roller skating premise and into some kind of more character based study of the family. Also, introduction of the actual song ‘Whip It’, though I always preferred ‘Girl U Want’, myself, and ‘Snowball’, all from that album Freedom of Choice.

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I greatly enjoyed Tony Martin’s second book A Nest of Occasionals and I suggest to you that you read it. He also writes weekly for The Scrivener’s Fancy which I have bookmarked on the right. The other writers are very fine too, on the whole.

some things I remember

In the early 90s a woman I worked with told me that the man downstairs from her was having a sexual relationship with a soap star (who she named but I won't). This story was in part about how she could hear everything that was being said in the immediate vicinity of her home. So the soap star was at the house and the man told him about a friend who had no teeth, and the soap star said, 'Christ, how does the poor cunt eat?' We had a laugh about this story when she told it and she said the line many times over the next few days in imitation of the soap star's hoarse, coarse voice.

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For a few years I went out with a woman who was prone to chucking berkos at the drop of a hat. Once we were driving to Newcastle and I found that a cassette I had got off the front of a music magazine - you know, Select or Vox or something - was in the glovebox divested of its shrink wrap. I had no interest in the tape in question and would not have expected anyone else to have any interest in it, as it was just the usual major record company puff material that you would have expected on that kind of artefact; I would probably have never taken the shrinkwrap off it, myself. So I asked her if she had removed the plastic. She went ballistic at the accusation and the rant lasted well over an hour (while she continued to drive) - the worst I recall though I could probably think of others if I had to. I think this might have been the time she had to pull the car over to vomit, she was so angry at this accusation. A few weeks later she told me she had thought I had left the tape there for her as a present, and so she had taken the shrink wrap off. And I'm not kidding.

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Once I was walking along Lennox St, Newtown with a small amount of shopping including some Coco Pops. Two itinerants, man and woman, came up and insisted I give them some money, but I refused. The woman tried to grab my Coco Pops but could not wrest them from me. They moved on and I heard her say to him, 'I almost got his Coco Pops'.

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The song 'Reminiscing' by Little River Band (LRB) has been played on the radio over four million times. Not all the group wanted to record it at the time but later came to see it was actually a successful hit song.

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The Swedish Chef from the Muppets was in LRB, not many people realise this because in LRB he didn't wear his hat.