Circus Minimus

For a while there, way before emo, I was working against mimes. Particularly street mimes. 

Anytime I found someone behind an upturned hat, walking into a breeze, trying to escape from a glass box, or accidentally sewing their lip to their elbow, I’d heckle them until they revealed their true nature and either turned violent or wept invisible tears over the invisible slice of cake they’d just dropped. 

I really felt I was getting somewhere, too. I was seeing less of them about and when Princess Diana started her anti-mime campaign in the mid-90s, I thought it was in the bag. Then someone pointed out to me that I had probably misheard the radio news, and that she had thrown her lot in with an anti-mine organisation. 

“OK, fine,” I thought. She could go after the land mines, I’d go after Marcel and his ilk. I’d see her at the Nobel ceremony and ignore her salty tears of regret when I kissed my cheque. But, to be honest, it kind of took the fight out of me and I lost interest. These days I am quite busy organising the war on pandas. Modern times, modern exigencies.

Recently, however, the old enmity came rushing back when I was thrust into the heartland of the scourge. 

I was at a lunch and found myself sitting next to a young contact juggler, along with his girlfriend,  a clown/mime/knife thrower; his best mate, a carney of some sort, and his best mate’s girlfriend, a circus animal wrangler. Now, it’s been a long time since I fought in The Clown Wars (it was a more civilised age) but those allegiances die hard and I was ready to give them a bit of what-for. 

But the more I listened, the more I relaxed. Turns out we don’t have to do anything to stem the tide of mimes, clowns, carneys and other evil from emerging from under the big-top. They’re their own worst enemy. The camels hate them, the knife thrower is really reliable at hitting the balloon she practises with (the balloon that represents the assistant’s head) and they’re all in financial trouble. But here’s the self-inflicted danger that really tickled me.

Remember David Bowie in Labyrinth? Remember how he moved those crystal balls (about the size of a softball) hypnotically around on his hands? Well, that’s contact juggling. I was talking to the contact juggler and admiring his balls when he said, 

“These are really dangerous, did you know?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yeah, my teacher once came back to his car, where he’d left his balls, to see it just catching alight and all full of smoke.”

“Really?!”

“Yeah. I left them out on my desk once and walked back in to see the paper they were sitting on turning brown and starting to curl.” 

It twigged. The crystal juggling balls are an incredibly effective magnifying glass. Put them down, let the sun come up, and poof - things burst into flames underneath them.

I dropped some sage advice on how to stop things spontaneously igniting around his balls.

“Yep, it’s as my Grandfather used to say; It‘s important to know where your ballsack is, in this crazy, mixed-up world.”

Fuck Art, Let's Dan... Whoops!

I went to see Monet before he left town and I gotta say, I just think the guy needed some glasses. All his stuff was really blurry. I felt sorry for him.

Anyway, on the way out I noticed these two. Or is it three?

In a good humoured way and without radical ambiguity, the banal and impersonal bust is bestowed with a nice bit of temporal trickery.

The impression is they have reacted to an unlikely event: The sudden animation and destruction of one of their own.

Did he make a break for it? Did the sculptor make a slip, for which the other two will seek their stoney revenge?

The inanimate is vivified in a conceptual 'frozen moment'. The viewed become the viewers and ... ahhh, all the rest of the art guff that can be so easily tacked onto a good wheeze. (I was really going to go to town with a couple more paragraphs of bollocks, masquerading as windy art criticism - just for giggles - but that would be unfair to the piece.) I liked it and it brought a smile to my face.

But they missed a golden opportunity with the name of the piece. For some unknown reason, it was not called "Bust-ed".

Perhaps the artist had too much class. I dunno.

"I, Am Your Father."

Evil. Black and White

I was at home putting Lara Croft in danger (by pointlessly swan-diving into completely dry watering holes) when Smurfy rang me and told me there was going to be some Panda gear on the news.

Now, I’d already been let down by the black and white bastards once this week, when one of the channels promised me some of their work and it ended up being ten seconds of “… are finally presented to Taiwan” and that was about it.

What had happened, I gather, is that there had been a lengthy delay delivering the two pandas and the Taiwanese were just about to get all up in China’s face about it. An international crisis was averted when the boof-heads were finally handed over. I would like to stress that I had no part in this particular deal, but being the world reviled expert on monochromatic mammals that I am, I was duty bound to watch the next instalment in the insidious rise of the bear.

Tonight’s offering from the panda camp was a parade of immature, immobile bludgers, all carried out on stage to the delight of the crowd. These were the ones that had been saved or conceived or built or trapped or dug up or whatever… (details, pah) since the big earthquakes in China.

If you look at the posture and the expression on a panda’s face when it is being carried out on stage by a woman of slightly less than half its weight, you will be struck by the dopey gormlessness. The flaccid hanging of the forelimbs over the woman’s arm, the drooping tummy and boneless back legs dangling in front of her as she fights to carry the sack of wet fur into the limelight to be admired. Admired for what? Being fatally relaxed?

What you would also be struck by, as we cut to exciting footage of pandas ‘escaping’ the quakes (being carried by long-suffering tiny woman again), is that being dragged to safety looks exactly the same as being dragged into the spotlight. Even with buildings and geological features tumbling down around it, the posture and expression is exactly the same one it has when people are baying for its autograph.

Nothing can be that oblivious. They must be so deeply engrossed in thought that earthquakes or rock concerts make no difference to them.

The question needs to be asked.

What are they planning?

Your Move

I reckon you’d need to be a self-flagellating nutbag to want to rise in the ranks of the sort of organisation that has woven a profound dislike of you and your kind into its fabric.

I’m not talking about Obama and the US Government. The organisation he has sought to rise in doesn’t have at its core proscriptive statements on gender, race or creed. The Founding Fathers were quite eloquent on the point that it wasn’t about that (even though a few of them were slave owners).  Obama can work there without having to pointlessly claw away at the very basis of the organisation on a daily basis. It wasn’t built to hate him. In his organisation, you get there and stay there by being popular - and he’s clearly that. His particular club is all about that.

No, if you are a woman or a gay and want to rise up in the ranks of a big church I reckon you’ve got to love wearing a hair-shirt. 

Even if you are unable to face the realities of an omnipotent being that supposedly loves you, hears your every thought, is interested in meddling in day-to-day human affairs, but is also willing to let gratuitous human suffering happen across the planet, at least you should recognise the realities of the organisation you have decided to devote so much time to.

It does not like you. It's worked so hard to keep you out.

That organisation is predicated around the idea that it has the sole line to the only true sky fairy, and in the main, this creator of planets tends to feel fairly threatened by the likes of you. (Even though He made you, the only reason I can see that He would be so anti-you, would be that He doesn’t want to get girl's germs or dress too snappily.) According to His infallible books, you are not liked or welcome - and this is not a democratic process.

So when Jon Stewart announced that his guest for last night’s show was going to be Bishop Gene Robinson, America’s first openly gay bishop, I turned the vacuum cleaner back on and kept dancing to “I want to break free.” (Did anyone else find Roger Taylor disturbingly attractive as a school girl in that clip? No? Only me? Ok, let’s move on.) But the vacuum was off when Gene was interviewed, and he knows how to bring the funny.

Jon Stewart was asking him about how the inauguration had gone. The Bishop said, “Blah blah history, blah honour to be there, blah, hope blah,” and then they got onto how many people had attended. 

While they were talking about the enormous crowds, Stewart quipped that it would’ve been doubly difficult in the throng for Robinson, because he was only allowed to move diagonally.

Laughter in the audience rises (slowly, as people catch on) and dies down.

Bishop Gene Robinson comes back with, “Jon, you’ve gotta remember, there’s also a queen on the board.” 

Oz As

American cultural colonialism continues almost unchecked in all English speaking countries. I know of no Pom or Aussie, over the age of 30, who doesn’t understand most US vernacular. People under the age of 30 just seem to sound American.

 

But happily, some local differences do survive. One of them cropped up the other day and it really made me smile. Partly because it was a compliment; mainly because it was a very Australian style of compliment. I really can’t see it ever being a normal way to conduct flattery in down-town L.A.

 

At a dinner party recently (that went till four in the morning) I related to one of my hosts the story of how I bought my ute. He’s the kind of guy who’d appreciate this sort of thing. He has a ute too. It also allowed me to relate the story of a character (the car salesman) and chuck around a grossly exaggerated accent.

 

It goes a little something like this.

 

After some argy-bargy between me and the salesman that included the sorry state of my trade-in, I played my trump card. I was able to date how long the ute had been in the yard without him being able to shift it. I mixed that in with a touch of,

 

 “… during these worsening economic times, no one is buying big-ticket items.” 

He came back in his thick Balkan accent,

 

“Ahh mate! You are taking the moneys from my kid’s mouth!” Excellent.

 

He then followed up with the grimmest of grim Balkan faces, gripped his chin with his left hand, growled for a little while, and then jammed out his right hand and said,

 

“Alright, it is done!”

 

He then lightened, removed his ‘dealing’ face and said, “So, do you want a beer?”

 

Being the stick in the mud I am, I said,

 

“Mate, it’s ten in the morning!” I was waiting for him to offer a scotch.

 

I drove away, having traded a car that was close to exploding and getting the ute for just on half the advertised price. Everyone’s happy, except his children who have no money to eat.

 

As I mentioned, the dinner where I related the story ran very late and I ended up crashing on a spare bed, snuggled underneath their whippet. The next day the host drove me back to where Emergency Contact and I were supposed to be bunking.

 

As we pulled in behind my ute, host says,

 

“Ah, so this is it?”

 

“Yup, that’s the one.”

 

He gets out and circles it once, looks inside the cabin, looks at me and says,

 

“And you got it for five?”

 

“Yup.”

 

He then pays a truly Aussie compliment on my second-hand-car dealing acumen.

 

“Mate, it’s stolen.”

Movie Reviews And Considered Thoughts On Cinema

Recently, while I was in a helpless state, Emergency Contact super-glued me to the couch and pinned my eyeballs open. She then, in revenge for some foul deed I must have committed, ordered Mama Mia through the cable movie thingy.

I should show my hand and admit that I was not a fan of Abba the first time round; but holy fuckin’ tone deaf geriatrics, Batman! What a disaster of a film that is.

It’s a nasty little immoral plot, focusing on a charmless, self-obsessed brat who feels that everyone is there for the simple task of pleasing her. It smelled a bit like opera.

All the leading women, who should know better, employ an acting style I shall now coin as ‘high times require high volume’. Honestly, I haven’t seen so many old hags yelling at each other since last year’s over 80s quidditch grand final.

The island it is filmed on should be one of the stars of the show, but somehow the cinematography failed there as well. You see more alluring shots of the Med in a five minute segment on Getaway.

You can’t relax and let it wash over you either. At any moment, one of the aging stars could break a hip, an arm, or into song. That is extremely nerve wracking with Pierce Brosnan deciding to add his tonsils to the line-up. 

What. Was. He. Thinking? 

I thought his people were supposed to be naturally musical. I can’t look at him the same way ever again. I have seen the karaoke/Gong Show/Red Faces moment, where all dignity is carefully bundled up and chucked out the nearest window. He’s farted at the dinner table and it will add to the gaping void in my life. 

I give it two technicoloured-Bjorns, out of ten. 

Some of you will have been aware of another gaping void and been able to put a name to it. Others will have simply been feeling that certain something, akin to an itch in a phantom limb. What’s been keeping you up at night, or adding to the Sunday afternoon depression, has been the absence of a third Underworld film in your lives. 

No, really.

Well thankfully, thoughtful film producers have sought to fill that aching chasm. But they have missed a marketing opportunity too, I think. 

It should be called, Underworld - I’m Lycan It!

And no, I won't be seeing or reviewing it. I just needed to get that off my chest.

Further Pandantics

I was talking to David Attenborough the other day and, recognising as he does the importance of my work in the field, he was asking how my campaign against pandas was going.

I admitted that I was fighting an uphill battle. Ewster, one of my senior panda field researchers, had sent me an update. Even I had to concede that there was some top-notch comedy gear coming from the black and white boof-heads.

I give you this years almost certain winner of ‘Best News Article’ (unless ‘Kyle Sandilands Caught in Orang-utan Love Triangle’ happens to get written between now and December 31).

Panda Bites Third Tourist In 2 Years At China Zoo (Article Link)

There is so much good material in the article that I actually blacked out for a little while, having been overwhelmed by a complex set of emotions, starting with what the Germans call wozumteufelsollichanfangen (loosely translated to “where the hell do I start!?”) right up to the bitter disappointment that comes with the knowledge that your career as a world reviled naturalist might have reached its natural apotheosis and now follows the inevitable slide into mediocrity.

I won’t over-sell the article too much more, other than to say that once you have read the line, “Gu Gu first made news in 2007 when he bit a drunken tourist who jumped into his pen and tried to hug him. The tourist retaliated by biting the panda in the back.” You know it’s pretty much all downhill from there.

Perhaps it is with simple verse that I can best express my thoughts on this complex, baffling and slightly inbred animal.

No one can

Maul a man

The way

A panda can

P.S. David Attenborough runs the bowling club the next train station up the line.

So Afraid Of The Darth You Could Sith Your Pants

This one is going to start out with one of my horribly vague assertions where, no matter how odd or inaccurate the example is, I pretend that I’m trying to illustrate a greater truth. Further, I will pretend the accuracy is not axiomatically the important point, it’s the universal truth that I bring to the table as I ladle out the crud.

So, apologies to people with far sturdier methods of parable and homily, but the show must go on.

I remember reading a book when I was pretty young that I’m sure was called ‘Children of the Lie’.* It was one of the many fashionable behaviour and psychology books that littered my parent’s bookshelves from the 70s onwards. It was about what parents do that utterly fuck-up children, who then carry it on to fuck-up their own children… I think. (Stuff like letting them read lots of behavioural and psychology books during the 70s and 80s.)

In it was the tale of a kid who didn’t have it so good as far as his parent’s sensitivity was concerned.

They lived in an American farming community and did all the things that entails, including thinking it’s a good idea to present children and teenagers with firearms. The much beloved elder brother is given a particularly sort after gun as a significant present, which he inevitably shoots himself with. He was depressed, or didn’t like guns, or both, but the salient point in the first part of the account was that it was a really stupid thing to give this particular kid a gun. The family is destroyed and confused. "Why?" they ask themselves. They console the younger son and say the right things, “You’re the most valuable thing in the world to us.” and then on his next significant birthday, present him with the very gun that his idolised elder brother killed himself with. Actions speak louder than words and that is yelling, “Can you go out and top yourself, please?” 

The result? I don't think he grew up into a very nice person... or something. But you get my drift.

So, you’re a little kid who’s watched Star Wars and you understand that Darth Vader is not a good guy and is driven to his evilness in the most horrible circumstances. Off to bed you go and lie there in the dark underneath the Darth Vader wall clock your parents gave you for Christmas. In case you weren’t going to get the wrong idea, my young padewan, if you look at the packaging, the thing has glowing eyes, and, I can’t stress this enough, breathes in the dark.

Sweet dreams, young prince.


*Before anyone says, "You could've Googled the book Nick." I did. Its fundamental refusal to appear drove me to write the first paragraph. It makes me fear for the confidence I have in my memory when, if I don't get a search result, I doubt its existence.

Gazing At The Crystal Bucket

I wouldn’t be surprising the discerning readers of this blob with the observation that a lot of telly is just a bit disappointing. I don’t normally bother mentioning it because it’s a bit like saying that Kyle Sandilands is a pillow. We know, and really, even mentioning it is giving it oxygen. (Note to self). There’s something nasty in the woodpile, let’s concentrate on better stuff.

But I need to get a few random things off my chest.

How are we going to stop the television execs doing stupid things to television series? Why are they cancelling, moving, repeating and inserting ‘encore’ episodes into normal seasonal programming? Obviously the shrinking television advertising dollar isn’t getting the message through.   

Have the Scared Weird Little Guys broken up? ‘Cause if John (the tall one) is looking for Rusty (the not tall one)  he’s bowling fast medium in the Australian Twenty20 side under the name of James Hopes. It is uncanny.

The South African cricket team needs to think about the importance of kerning on the team uniforms. This is the art of getting the spaces between your letters right. Television means that players are going to be broadcast and viewed from further than eight feet away and you need to space I and N so they don’t read like an M. Poor old DUMINY just looks like they’re playing a prank on him.

The ad with the guy standing there thinking to himself, “sausages” instead of “health insurance” is a very funny advertisement and shows how it should be done, unlike the following.

AAMI currently have an ad with people standing around at a multiple car pileup. The ‘concept’ is that sometimes it’s a bit hard to explain how an accident happened. The most inexplicable thing is that we are asked to believe that 15 to 20 adults are all unable to identify a swan when they see one. There’s a whole lot of “they’ve got beady eyes” and “they’re big and black”… Anyone will tell you, they‘re swans and they’re bastards.

Why are fast-food ads gay? They all seem to feature fit young blokes staring lovingly at each other as they masticate on their burgers. Is that really the market? I thought they were trying to sell to fat, poor, stupid breeders. 

More fast-food ad stupidity - The KFC cricket ad where someone’s grumbling about not being left any coleslaw. NO ONE. NOT ONE PERSON, IN THE HISTORY OF THE WHOLE OF EVERYTHING HAS EVER BEEN UPSET ABOUT NOT GETTING ANY COLESLAW.

Sing it with me now.

You don’t make friends with salad

You don’t make friends with salad

Ill Wind

There are almost no circumstances in which torture or execution of people can be justified. There are extreme conditions that ethics think-tanks will posit to exercise the minds of its members. Like the fate of millions relying on the information supplied unwillingly by the terrorist with the nuclear weapon codes, that sort of thing.

But right here I can supply the evidence to justify such a need in a far simpler circumstance. I’m (only just) being silly about it.

I can’t remember when I saw my first leaf-blower, it was either while I was actually in America or I was watching an American show, but I do remember it as somewhat of an epiphany. I thought to myself, “That epitomises the ridiculous waste and stupidity of a society that has totally lost touch with reality. Who wakes up in the morning and says to themselves, ‘I’ve got it, rakes aren’t good enough, they don’t make enough noise!’” That smugness lasted until they became popular in Australia, which wasn’t long at all.

Once, as a bus driver, I rounded a sharp corner a bit on the quickish side in a small leafy suburban backstreet and narrowly avoided running down three old ladies standing on the drive of their retirement home. (It’s complicated, just trust me on the fact that it wasn’t entirely my fault.) To avoid running them down and getting an enormously high score in the BDFSS (Bus Driver Fatality Scoring System - triple points awarded in this case) I jagged across the road and then nearly ran down a guy using a leaf blower.

Now, in any sane court of law in this country, running down someone using a leaf blower should not only not get you convicted of anything, you should be awarded the keys to the city and a ticker-tape parade. However, my circumstances were mitigated by the fact that the user of the leaf-blower had Down’s Syndrome, which takes my score way out the other side into the highly respected double-triple-bonus category. When you score one of those in the BDFSS you get to take the rest of your driving career off.

So I have a complicated and unfriendly relationship with leaf-blowers and, come to think of it, I don’t know anyone who owns one, thinks it’s a good idea to use one, or admires them. I just don’t understand it one bit. They are noisy and I often see them used by people in a high wind, adding to the utter pointlessness of it all.

So when we find the inventor of the leaf blower, his death should be made relatively quick and painless. However, no contravention of the Geneva Convention on Human Rights is too bad for the one who invented the toy “My First Leaf Blower”. You can see on the packaging the words “Try Me”. Yes, in one of those bogus military tribunals, I think.

My Two Front Teeth Are Just The Start

Kids have a literal mindedness that is sometimes amusing, other times lethal. I present the two extremes:

My little nephew recently sunk to the bottom of a pool, much to the surprise and alarm of everyone concerned. He swims perfectly well - at swimming lessons – but he wasn’t at swimming lessons so, blub, blub, blub. I hasten to add that he was well supervised and instantly fished out. Amusing.

Pictured here is the literal mindedness that’s going to result in the sinking of a credit rating.

My godson was told by his mother to take some sticky tabs and highlight the pages that contained something he might like for Christmas, to help make mummy’s choices easier.

If you look closely, you can see that some of the tabs are actually two or three deep. Lethal.

Vic Roads Attempts Hypnotist Act

Victoria Roads are playing fast and loose with our minds.

They want you to think that they care for you, but that wording is ambiguous.

Honestly, you’ve never seen so many signs telling you that sleeping behind the wheel is detrimental to your car's panel integrity. Every 800 metres there’s some earnest bit of pleading from the powers-that-be about speeding when you are asleep with an overloaded truck, or something… I dunno, I wasn’t paying that much attention. If it wasn’t for all those micro-sleeps, I would’ve been so tired.

But it’s all lies. As you can see by the sign above, once you’ve read messages that say NAP NOW! Rhythmically, for a few hours, you’re not even going to bother pulling over. You’re just going to do it right there and then.

"And when I click my fingers in three, two, one; you're backwards, on fire in a ditch."