The secret behind Brunswick boho chic revealed

I think if I had my time again I’d a Brunswick boho. It’s a sub-culture I relate to despite the bad facial hair and op shop clothes. And the chicks are dead cute.

It was a world I delved into last night at the Edinburgh Castle on Sydney Road, where I saw a couple of bands play on a night headlined by an interesting musical outfit called Zond.

I like Zond, they made me laugh.

The band room out the back had about 50 people including a wonderful amount of gorgeous women, which was enough to keep me in there even when Zond started playing.

OK, before I go on I should qualify this review-of-sorts by acknowledging that I am getting old and uncool, and that while I wasn’t the oldest person in the room I was probably the most grown up.

Zond’s sound check had a seemless transition into the start of the performance. I only knew it was the start of their performance because the drummer was playing. The bass guitarist was kneeling down near his amp twiddling with dials, another guitarist had her back to the audience and there was another chick kneeling next to stage playing what looked like a little Casio keyboard with sound effects set to tortured cat. The highlight though was the  lead guitarist (for want of a better status) who simply put his guitar down next to his amp so it started feeding back and then made all different noises using his footpedals.

Oh, did I say that they were also really fucking loud? So much so that half the crowd (and I shit you not here) had earplugs!

Incrediby the lead man spent the second song (which was marginally better despite not technically being a song) changing a string on his guitar despite the fact he didn’t even play the fucking thing in the intro. How do you snap a fuckin guitar string by leaning your guitar against an amp? Perhaps the poor string committed suicide.

The guitar stringing and bass guitarist’s pedantic ways with his amp settings meant a delay between songs to which my mate Mark, who was on his 10th Coopers stout, yelled out “you’re fucking shit” loud enough over the din to even turn the heads of those wearing ear plugs.

By the time Zond hit their straps I surveyed the room partly as an excuse to get a second, third and subsequent looks at the cute blonde chick in the red checquered shirt. I noticed how the crowd were reacting to Zond and through my observations worked out the secret of appearing to be an uber cool bohohemian.

Firstly, no one was dancing. Which really was just as well - though by this stage Mark was playing drums on the table and was only saved from ejection when a mate passed him a pair of maraccas, which he shook along in way that marginally improved Zond’s sound.

I noticed a couple of nerdy guys, perhaps friends of Zond, who were enthusiastically head banging to the songs – one looked like an eight-year-old’s impression of Jesus, the other was a full on Mac user albeit the kind you’ll never see on Apple’s promotional material.

Every one else sat there looking stunned. It was here that I discovered the boho-chic myth. Sitting still during a musical performance loud enough to destroy kidney stones with a deadpan look on your face is not an expression of uber boho cool. No, it’s an expression of boredom and despair, where you’re fighting instinct in an effort to be cool. You see, I reckon everyone in that room, apart from badly drawn Jesus and Mac nerd, absolutely fucking hated what they were hearing, but did not want to appear uncool by admitting they did not get it.

Not me though. I got up, shook my head,  jokingy yelled to Mark if he thought Zond would play Khe Sahn and then went out to the main bar to watch the Williams sisters do battle at Wimbledon. Here I was, Mr Suburban Divorced Dad of Two, and I was the most individual person there.

To be fair Zond had a couple of songs that were good. The drummer did a good job at keeping the audience engaged, however they suffered from the usual disease of ill-prepared, fucking self-indulgent guitarists (the bass player and foot pedal guy) who take themselves way too seriously and seemed to think we’d all just payed $8 to watch them rehearse. They have an interesting sound which would have been much more bearable if they simply just stood up and fucking played.

I agree with Andrew Bolt, but …

Andrew Bolt actually has a point in his post about the emerging criticism of the burqa by feminist commentators such as Jill Singer and ABC journalist Virgina Haussegger.

On her blog Haussegger says: ” … There is no place here for the burqa . Australians must rally to have the burqa banned.”

To which Bolt says “Is it still racist to say such things? Or is it now an ABC-approved feminist cause? I get so confused.”

He has a point, but it still does not excuse those who use the burqa as an excuse to denigrate Muslims.

What shits me about feminists and Islamaphobes who decry the burqa is that none of them have actually asked the women who wear them if they feel oppressed. My ex-wife’s mother was a nurse at a top private hospital in London. Many of the patients she cared for were Saudi women  (many getting cosmetic surgery) who would walk into the hospital in their burqa and then in the privacy of their suites remove them to reveal revealing Prada and Chanel clothing. If they felt oppressed she never noticed. After all if they were always covered by a burka why would they be getting nose jobs?

It’s worth noting at this point that the burka worn by Arab women predates Islam in some cultures and is less about the hiding of a woman’s face from men than the chadris worn by women in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, which covers the eyes. Most of the covered Muslim women we see in Australia wear the former and their reasons for doing so having nothing to with extremist groups like the Taliban. In fact some would argue that it liberates them from being treated as a sex object.

Their critics have probably not witnessed what I did recently at a DFO outlet in Melbourne. A woman in a burqa was walking with her husband and children when two women right next to her yelled out how “disgusting” her attire was and continued to make patronising and insulting remarks. I’m sure that did wonders for that woman’s self-esteem, not to mention her children. It seems these women are all for women wearing what they want as long it conforms to the muffin-topped cougar look.

And why is it oppressive for a woman to be required to wear a burqa because that’s what her culture dictates, but OK for women to be forced to wear skimpy clothing if they want a particular job or play particular sports? I’m sure that there are women who in Australia wear the burqa but would prefer not to. However, they make up a fraction of the Australian women who are confronted by some form of  sexual harassment based on their appearance at work or in a social setting.

Tattslotto – for a fuckin’ second there …

The Tattslotto website has shat itself but luckily the Herald Sun published the numbers. I had a quick look before running upstairs to get my ticket. As I came down the stairs I remembered some of the numbers and noticed my ticket as 3, 12 and 21. When I got down stairs saw I also had 29 and 38 but alas fell two short though, albeit with two numbers that came very close. My heart raced for a second there.

I assume five numbers in Super 7s is less lucrative than 5 numbers in normal six-number Tattslotto so I’m not holding my breath, especially when you consider the millions I’d be sharing with. Surely instead of having $100 million as the main prize they could bump up the lower divisions.

Yes I’m a sore loser, and rightly fucking so too. I already hate the cunt(s) who won the big prize. They say that one in three Australian adults has purchased a ticket for tonight’s draw. That means the winner(s) is gonna be one unpopular fucker up there with Ivan Milat, Martin Bryant, Bronwyn Bishop and Lleyton Hewitt. Still at least they’ll be less hated than Kyle Sandilands.

There will also be massive sour grapes tomorrow when everyone reconciles not being filthy rich with talk of “that sort of money will fuck up people’s lives. You wait, the poor winner is fucked!”.

I hope so!

Let’s hope the winner does a George Best and spends it all on fast cars, fast women and drink and then squanders the rest.

Vote for the best Michael Jackson joke

Feel free to add more jokes in comments, or abuse me for being a thoughtless cunt.

Why is Senator Fielding protecting Liberal Senator Abetz?

If you saw the footage of the Senate’s OzCar hearing*, where Godwin Grech dropped the bombshell which ended up being based on the fake email, you would have saw what a piece of work Liberal Senator Abetz is.

I thought at the time that Abetz seemed to know what was coming and was becoming very agitated when the chair of the meeting tried to move on from the questions he was asking Grech. It seemed as though the embattled Treasury official wasn’t going to a particular script and Abetz wasn’t going to let the Eureka moment, which ended up backfiring so spectacularly, pass him by.

Of course the rest is a history, albeit with further revisions to come. As we saw it was Malcolm Turnbull who copped most of the flak over the fake email, which is fair enough as he’s the Party leader. But today we finally saw Abetz come into the picture. It was claimed today that the Senator  mislead the Senate Committee where Grech testified. According to News Ltd, sources say that Abetz and Malcolm Turnbull last week viewed the email  before the Senate Committee Hearing.

The Government today turned it’s attention to Abetz and sought to launch a Senate inquiry into whether he misled the hearing when he quoted the fake email.

However the move was blocked by the Coaltion and Family First Senator Steve Fielding.

Independent Senator Nick Xenophon and the Greens supported the Government’s move to investigate Abetz.

So why did Fielding object?

It’s time this snivelling little fucking, fundi, cockhead did us all a favour and declared that he’s just a hack Liberal Party stooge. How can this pig flu-ridden fuckwit bullshit on about family values and block an investigation into whether someone has lied and possibly intimidated someone before a Senate hearing.

Fielding is a hypocrite with no credibility, and it’s a failing of our political system that such an insignificant little cock snot can have so much power over the parliamentary decision making process. 

*If anyone has a link to that footage please paste in comments.

Unattractive parent syndrome – I has it

Ugly parent isn’t the word for my behaviour. And rather than being kicked out of the netball centre I volunteered to go behind the glass wall after my abilities as a role model were questioned by a netball association official.

OK, a bit of background first. My eldest daughter plays netball in a team that kicked arse all year. Last year they replicated my beloved Geelong Football Club by losing just one game all season before blowing an unlosable Grand Final. This year their form was impeccable again so they shat a grand final berth in, only to play the same team that beat them last year.

The girls were nervous. The other team, in red, showed that even 12 year olds can be right fucking bitches who take after their bitch trog mothers. One of the umpires, who we last saw officiate last year’s grand final is the personification of fucking evil itself and obviously has a thing for teams in red. I bet she drives a fucking Prado.

The game was level, goal for goal for four quarters and the score was 9-9 with four seconds to go. The umpire actually stopped play and the clock to berate our team’s coach for yelling out instructions – something he has been allowed for the past two seasons. A bullshit free was awarded to the red team who found themselves shooting for the game. In four seconds they had two shots at goal.

They missed both.

Time on!

Last time I was this nervous was 2007 Preliminary Final when Geelong narrowly beat those bastards Collingwood – a night my youngest daughter will forever call “The Night Daddy Scared Me”.

Time-on involves two three-minute halves. I was standing on the sideline, by knees actually trembling. The play started. The yellow centre threw a good pass to my daughter at Wing Attack, who threw a pin-point accurate pass to the Goal Attack before being pinged for stepping.

That’s when I yelled out “SHE DID NOT!”; fortunately without any ribald seasoning.

I don’t know what came over me - actually I do, that umpire is a fucking bitch who so favoured the other team it wasn’t fucking funny.

That is when I recieved the lecture from the official about calming down and being a responsible role model for the children. I should add here that even my ex-wife thought I wasn’t out of line here. It was at this stage I decided to leave courtside and go behind the giant glass wall to view the game where I’d only shame myself to anyone who could lip read.

When I got there there were a couple of other mums in self-imposed exile. One of them, a very decent unassuming woman came up to me and said “that bloody umpire, I have good mind to go out there and bitch slap her!”

Meanwhile both sides went goal for for goal until my kid’s team finally got two in a row. They were two goals up with a minute to spare when the other team bagged one. With 30 seconds to go the ball flew down to the red goal when one of our girls caught the ball, Leo Barry-2005-Grand-Final-style, on the last line of defence.  We all waited for devil bitch to blow the whistle to award a free to the red team – no reason for it, it’s just what she fucking does. The clock continued to count down until YES! Our girls fucking won!

OK, so I didn’t swear. I never verbally abused any children. I did not encourage my kid to hurt another. I never ran onto the court and smacked  the umpire – the queue would have been too long. I wasn’t exactly an ugly parent, just a little unattractive perhaps in a Sarah Jessica Parker kind of way where it’s debatable. But that does not excuse my behaviour. It’s only a game and in the end it was good to see our girls go over to the  losers runner’s up to thank them for a good game – though I noticed they never came up to congratulate our girls, the little bitches.

I have learned from this experience and will know how to behave next time my kid makes a grand final. I’ll just have to do it behind the glass.

Kate Ellis comes to the “fore!”

This is a great case iof a picture telling the whole story – there’s no guessing what happened here when Labor Sports Minister Kate Ellis tried her hand at golf in front of Parliament House yesterday resulting in an errant ball ending up flying towards the assembled media. Dawn Fraser’s facial expression is also priceless.

This pic, by News Ltd’s Kym Smith is one of a series.

A gate in need of a scandal – Dwarfgate!

OK, as I pondered at Grods I would love one day for circumstances to arise where a political scandal broke in Australia that would forever be known as Dwarfgate.

What is Dwarfgate? You tell me. Use your imagination and/or fucked up minds to come up with the story of the personalities involved and the events leading to Dwarfgate: the scandal that stunned a nation.

Best entry gets fuck all aside from loads of LOLS and