Pop Goes The World

Remember Happy Days? Me either. But i do remember the short unemployed Italian-American creep that lived in an attic above the family home of the Cunninghams and hung out at the diner with a red haired kid and his idiot friends before stealing their girls away with motorbike tricks, the instant repairing of ailing jukeboxes with a swift kick from his size 6 boot and, presumably, rohypnol. He was Arthur Fonzarelli. AKA The Fonz. And here is something else that is worth recalling about him – he was a collar popper.

Collar popping. How many gags, jibes, ‘Motivational Posters’, and knock backs from chicks is it gunna take collar poppers to work out that collar popping is about as bad a blight on fashion as there has ever been? Dudes – presumably that’s what you call yourselves – it ain’t cool. If collars were meant to be popped, they would come popped. They don’t, do they? And yet, they’re all around us – on TV commercials (look out for the popper in the Bunnings ad), in Big Brother (when clothes are actually worn), at sporting events, in nightclubs and bars, possibly in your very own social circles, and definitely at Dracula conventions. These dudes – are they serious?

Some advice – any girl who loves you is going to love you for the back of your neck. If she’s just in it for the collar, she’s not worth knowing. (Pop Tarts?). There is nothing fashionable or creative about what you’re doing. (Pop Art?) And you may even find that lowering the collar stops you getting beaten up on such regular occasions. (Snap Crackle Pop??)

Take a load off your shoulders and, please, stop the pop.

Chris Judd’s Hair-raising Adventure

When i was compiling my Australian Football League Bald All Stars last year, champion midfielder Chris Judd was firmly positioned in the centre. What a joy it was to watch this marvel off a player weave through traffic, win the Brownlow, captain a premiership side, slam home goals, attend every ceremony both significant and not with Rebecca Twigley on his arm, all done without the aid of a head of hair.

And now, it’s back. The hair,  once proudly shaven in willful defiance of male paten baldness; once removed as a symbol of release from ego, id and super-bald-ego; once cut clean away as a lightening-rod of power and control to all those who have suffered at the fickle hand of the hair god; is back. Is he serious?

What the hell is Judd playing at? Once it’s gone, it’s gone. There are no encores, no return ‘best of’ shows. He’s got the money, got the game, got the celebrity, got the girl. What exactly does he need the hair for? Does Judd have the same ability with follicle growth that he has with a football: seemingly trapped yet miraculously able to somehow extricate himself from an impossible set of circumstances? Has being the spokesman for Visi Recycling allowed him to access some technology that enables the recycling of hair? Is there anything the man cannot do?

Sadly, yes. And a very important thing it is. He has been unable to hang on to his legion of bald fans and admirers. Those who saw in this clean cranium their own reflection (and I mean that quite literally – one could see their own reflection on Judd’s head). You’ve let us down Chris. You and your hair. You’ve let us all down. I hope it’s worth it.

Now – Go Ablett!!!

The Bush Concert (no, not the bush fire appeal)

The Dubya Show is hitting the road. Are they serious? You know it. For $1000 a head, Australians can take their eats at the all singing, all dancing, all war mongering George W Bush Speaking Tour. Yes, they really are using the words ‘George W Bush’ and ‘speaking’ in the same sentence to sell this puppy. It’s hard to express the shock and/or awe. (Mental note: is the Werribbee sewerage farm charging an entry fee? They may be missing a golden revenue opportunity…).

Tour manager Max Markson is already revving up ticket sales thus: “He has presided over one of the most difficult times the world has seen since World War II”. Indeed, Max. He caused it.

Americans who have recently lost their homes, their savings, their jobs, possibly, if they have been to Iraq lately, their limbs, can feel good about the fact that the man who has provided these gifts of the State will now be touring the world earning a fortune talking about how he did so. (Perhaps US citizens should find some succour in the fact that, whilst it will be Bush on stage taking questions and issuing dialogue, it will in fact be Dick Cheney who is writing the scripts, operating the lights, pulling the curtain levels, arranging the subsequent tour dates, funnling the profits through Halliburton, selling the merchandise, etc). Good times.

This could only be more ridiculous is Dame Edna Everage was MCing the show. (Mental note: arrange world tour in which George W Bush is interviewed by Dame Edna Everage. That’s brilliant).

The news won’t be all bad on this, of course. For those who are already missing the off the cuff idiocy of Bush’s presidency, this may turn out to be a dream come true. Bush Unplugged could prove more disastrous for the legacy of his Administration than all he has already achieved. At least this time the stupidities that emerge from his mouth will only cost the world $1000 a head – considerably less than the price it paid during his presidency.

Saving The Sea From Itself

If dolphins can hobble then that is what one located off the coast of Australia was found doing this week. Wearing the wounds of a recent run in with a shark, the dolphin’s maimed and brutalized body was flashed across the nightly news as it painfully breached and submerged beside a fishing boat. Bad news, life in the ocean.

Though lovers of everyone’s favourite warm-blooded, beachball balancing, back-flipping, ‘as smart as humans’ poster boy of the sea need not dispair. Viewers were assured – by whichever bloated government department it is that issues dolphin assurances – that the suffering creature would be found, treated, and returned happy and well to it’s home. Hm, are they serious?

Here’s the thing about the ocean: it’s pretty big. In fact it’s so big it takes up 70% of the planet. So big you could swim all day in it at Bondi and only see a few thousand people and a million ciggie butts. It seems to me that locating a single damaged dolphin in all the space could be reasonably difficult. Even more difficult that say, oh i don’t know, finding a single 6’6″ bearded muslim with a kidney disorder living in a cave somewhere in North Western Pakistan? You’re right. It’s the effort that counts. The humitarian gesture.

Here was me thinking that it was more a of resources to mount a dolphin hunt across the endless oceans than it was to put a little bit of energy into saving the Great Barrier Reef, or the Murray Darling Basin, or the soon to be extinct Blue Fin Tuna or Orange Ruffy. Truely, I’m a monster.

Finally, exactly whose job description does this fall under? The coast guard? The RSPCA? The EDSRT (Elite Dolphin Seabourne Response Team)? Maybe all, but probably none. Right now there are two possiblities – 1. That dolphin is lying at the bottom of the ocean with all his mates knocking back jega-bombs, peeling off the fake blood, and laughing about the fuss they made amongst their favourite ball-dropping, back-stepping, ‘as smart as dolphins’ poster boys for dry land. Or 2. That dolphin is lying on the bottom of the ocean.

Ugly Dogs

So let me see if i have got this right: the idea has been to breed the world’s ugliest dog. This is what someone has done with the breeding smarts, the gene splicing tools and the endless hours of boredom in their possession. Great stuff.

What did they do? Wake up one morning and throw a mange-ridden hyena and a bag of old scrotums into a blender and name the result ‘dog’? Did they stick dentures in the mouth of a rat, baste it in gasoline, set it alight, take a photo of the aftermath, and then email it to Satan with a note suggesting a product new line of pet? (Guess what, he got the memo). Or perhaps somebody simply hung a collar around the throat of Donnatella Versace. Whatever.

Now sure, I like looking and laughing at the various contributions to ‘Motivational Posters’ these things make as much as anyone else hoping to delete 30 seconds from my working day, but surely every living second these hideous freaks must endure is an exercise in agony, humiliation and shivering torment. And if the four-legged, buck-toothed freaks arriving in your inbox are not enough, spare a thought for the recently crowned Ugliest Dog in L.A. The owners must be so proud. C’mon, are the serious?