Entertainment

I Went to See “The (chortle) Boss”

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Well I have to admit to being suitably chastened.

Bruce Springsteen was in town and while I like a lot of his music (notwithstanding the wankerish, farcical, working class pretence of a lot of his lyrics), it’s never been enough to make me want to go to one of his concerts. Why would I want to listen to a champagne socialist with a few hundred mil in the bank, houses all over the North American continent and who flies everywhere in a private jet and have to listen to typical social justice warrior hypocrisy on how we’re destroying the planet and did I mention that Trump is Satan.

Friends of ours had a spare ticket for his concert here in Brisbane and asked me if I wanted to go and naturally I jumped at the chance. Two can play this hypocrisy game. It was sensational – fair cop me! And there was little time for commentary because there were mostly no breaks between songs. Talk about relentless. His only vaguely SJW comment referred to a charity which collects unused food from restaurants etc to distribute to the homeless and they were fundraising outside the venue. He recommended contributing – fair enough. And it was Valentine’s Day so there was a massive plug for the blokes to buy flowers for loved ones even if it’s just a crumby old single rose. Incidentally, and I’ll give myself a plug here, when I was last in full time employment I used to buy a rose for the mothers on our floor on Mother’s Day. No one ever bitched about me (that I was aware of) – management in action. Oh, and being Valentine’s Day it was only fair that I be at a concert while the child bride was a home watching I’m a Celebrity – Get Me Out of Here.

Anyhow back to Bruce. He did a few things I have never seen in a concert before and I’ve been to a few. Firstly he got up close and personal with the crowd in that he actually waded into the crowd – the standing only part at the front. He let kids strum his guitar during one song. He crowd surfed – can you believe it – about 20m across the standing area back to the stage. As far as I could tell, none of the women tried to confiscate his cruet as he passed overhead. Maybe his wife’s presence on the stage as part of the band put a dampener on that. Then during “Dancing in the Dark” he inevitably (if you’ve seen the clip of the song) invited a girl on stage to dance. Then another, then another, then another, then a bloke (??) then a young girl who looked about 8. All up about nine people invited on stage with one dancing on his pianist’s grand piano (he looked a tad pissed). Then the 8 year old got to sing a few bars.

Only one word for all of this – respect. Bruce, you’re still a social justice warrior wanker but you sure can put on a show.

The AFL – Not Everyone’s Favourite Sport.

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I recently read an article in GQ magazine called “10 Wankers You Only See at the AFL”. They are, in order:
1. Eddie Maguire – if you’re Australian you know who this bloke is. If you’re not, don’t fret.
2. The bloke who immediately shouts ”baaalll” when an opposition player gets possession. This is like a rugby fan demanding a rugby player be penalised for not releasing the ball immediately he is touched by an opposition defender.
3. People who slag off at the huge banners the players run through at the start of a game. More on this later.
4. The up close and personal slagger – the bloke (or shiela) who’s hanging over the boundary fence screaming abuse at the nearest opposition player. More on this later also.
5. The branded stadium fan. Not sure whether the author of the piece is complaining about the fan who refers to the stadium as Drinky Cola Stadium or its old pre-branding name of Ponce Park.
6. The dodgy runner – this is the bloke who relays water and messages to the players during play and gets in the way. Easily fixed – ban it. Can you imagine trainers all over the field during a Manchester derby.
7. The light beer cry baby – they sit in the licensed area in the middle of a row and annoy the shit out of twenty people every 15 minutes when they have to squeeze past to get another beer. Not sure what the reference to light beer is though.
8. The box bastard is the bloke who gets to sit in a box because of connections and pretty much ignores the game.
That’s the end of the list. Now the most attentive of you will have noticed a minor inconsistency between the title of the piece and the content, specifically the number of separate bits that make up the content. That’s it – there are supposed to be 10 but the author could only think of 8. I guess he rounded it up. Or the GQ editor was asleep.
This is symptomatic of the massive susceptibility AFL has to the traditional Aussie piss-take. And I am not about to pass up this opportunity to take one.
Starting with banner-man (wanker number 3), there are many AFL people who spend every night of the working week either watching their team train (the ones that still train at night – old traditions die hard) or constructing massive crepe paper banners with stupid messages on them. They hold it up for about 10 seconds, the team runs though it and shreds the bottom couple of feet, it is then taken down and discarded. A week’s work gone in the blink of an eye. The term “get a life” was coined specifically for these people. Confession – I am banner-slagger-man.
The up close and personal slagger (wanker number 4) is a close relative of banner-man but spends his week watching re-runs of the last time his team won anything. This guy knows who won left half back flanker of the year for Collingwood in 1935. On match day he gets a skin-full and screams abuse at opposition players and umpires alike. He paid his taxes (when he worked a few years ago) so it’s his right, right? A certain well known cricketer would have evolved into this bloke if he hadn’t genetically stumbled on a dynamite right arm.
Now let’s look at this “game” more generally.
They refer to the dressing sheds as “rooms” as in “Lanky Longfellow must be really hurt because they’ve taken him into the rooms”. I have “rooms” in my house and there is not an AFL person anywhere to be seen.
They refer to teams as “playing groups”. That’s what we take our kids to when they are too young for school. They are TEAMS and collectively the TEAMS make up the club.
They refer to captains, vice captains and senior players as the “leadership group”. They also have multiple captains and vice captains and I think “senior player” is a title you can bestow upon yourself because there is no hard and fast definition. No, each TEAM has a CAPTAIN and a VICE CAPTAIN, that way there is no confusion as to who is responsible for running the play during the game if we can get that runner (wanker number 6) off the field for good.
The “F” in AFL stands for “Football”, not what you think I think it stands for. Listen to an AFL person talk and you will think it stands for “Footy”. I think there’s a competition amongst AFL types to see who can lever this word into a conversation the most times. So the ball is a footy, the game is footy, the players play footy, the spectators watch and worship footy, the hacks write about footy, footy is all over the news. In fact it is the only news in Melbourne where they learned about 9-11 in October because it happened during the footy finals.
Have you noticed how whenever a player has a milestone to celebrate or is retiring, they always run out carrying and/or leading a tribe of little kids? This has absolutely no relevance to the proceedings other than for the player to demonstrate to the world that not only can he play “footy” but he is a real man because here is the proof that he has sex……. with women.
After the game the players and assorted hangers on link arms in a circle and all sing “I’m a Lumberjack and I’m Okay” which I believe is the team (not the playing group) song for all of the clubs.
And last but not least, the AFL is the vanguard social justice warrior organisation in the country. The AFL is an organisation just like Qantas and the ABC and the Australian Workers Union are organisations. Organisations are defined by a few pieces of paper with articles of association written on them and maybe a certificate from ASIC. But apparently if the boss of the AFL says the AFL supports gay marriage or an ABC journalist says the ABC supports climate change then everyone at the organisation is tarred with that brush. This is bullshit not least because organisations as such, don’t have brains.
Extending this theme in respect of the AFL, every weekend there is a cause to promote. So we have the Multicultural round, we have the Indigenous round, we have the Women’s round we have the AFL executives shouldn’t have sex with adult women who also work for the AFL round. The actual “footy” is being crowded out by social engineering. But I’ll give the virtue signallers at AFL House a piece of advice for free. Up close and personal slagger (wanker number 4), who makes up at least 50% of your fan base, doesn’t give a shit.

Back for My Birthday and The List

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The aftermath of 4 weeks in Europe.

After 4 weeks on the road (and on the sea and in the air to be more precise) and gastronomic, oenonic and beeronic overindulgences of the moronic rather than lessonic kinds you can imagine that our immune systems were vulnerable to attack so the child bride and I duly came down with catastrophic colds yesterday. Last night my nose, throat and lungs felt like Helms Deep under orc assault with Gandalf and the cavalry not due to arrive until about Friday. Consequently, on this my 60th birthday I feel like doing not much at all really. But this does allow the time for a degree of contemplation of something of vital importance.

If you have passed 60 already you will have received The List. No one knows where it comes from or who sends it or why. It does however provide guidance (as if any was needed, we’re 60 after all) for the twilight (zone) years of our lives. If you are over 60 you need read no further as you will have received your List already. If you are well past 60 you will have received it by post in an envelope with no return address. If you are well under 60 you will not know what I am talking about in that previous sentence (if you know what a sentence, of the grammatical not prison kind, is).

The List I received goes as follows:

1. Health
We, the human race, are living longer. For this reason we are apparently imposing an increasing burden on the health system. Now it stands to reason that if we are living longer we are actually healthier so there is an obvious contradiction here. Notwithstanding this, for the over 60’s the health system is a veritable pub smorgasbord of drugs and treatments to be taken advantage of at every opportunity. Over 60’s have lost all respect for the user pays system because we’ve paid and now it’s time to use. The younger “me generation” is going to have to come to grips with that as total economic melt-down looms because, as yet, they haven’t. Over 60’s won’t because we’ll all be dead, possibly from a drug overdose.

2. Education
a. English
English is about communication. This involves more than abbreviated texting and sexting (in the words and clothes departments respectively) via various devices. These are for making phone calls so people can speak to each other in well constructed sentences. Over 60’s understand this. They also understand that punctuation is not something you do in a colonoscopy bag.

b. Mathematics
Over 60’s can perform addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in their heads. They also know what these things are.

c. History
Over 60’s love history because they have more of it than the young. Stuff happened before the internet. You can use it to check.

3. Sex
For men over 60, sex can be likened to pouring your last can of petrol on the fire. This is a euphemism (for a metaphor) for attaching your superannuation to a fish hook, dangling it in a pool of pre-cougars, catching a trophy wife and going for it until the fire flames out in about 6 months. Then it’s over, assuming the money’s run out also. For married women over 60 this list item has no relevance.

4. Music
In our over 60s’ music, performers actually sing. More recently this has not necessarily been the case. Remember MC Hammer? “Thanks for talking us through that song MC. Now can you sing it and add a few musical instruments to that boring repetitive bass line? Oh…that’s it?” He’s got a lot to answer for. We of the Rolling Stones generation look forward to hoe rap clones scratching each other’s eyes out and the gangsta rap clones shooting each other into extinction. Either way the biggest con in musical history has a limited shelf life. Now leave us to our country and western heavy metal – a tuneless noise about hay – and dreaming about the hedonism of 60’s and 70’s rock.

5. Dancing
Over 60’s don’t or shouldn’t dance. Unfortunately some wish to retain this right. Fortunately the Dad Dance phase is well and truly over by 60 and if you must, it now involves anchoring your feet to the ground and swaying your arms to the music, generally with a small child attached to them.

6. Sport
All references to sport must now begin with the phrase “Back in my day…” as in “Back in my day these poofs wouldn’t have lasted 5 minutes with Lezzy Boyd, Greggy Dowling and Artie Beetson.” All given names (we used to call them Christian names) must end with “y” or “ie”.

7. Injuries
The above sport reference applies equally to sporting injuries as in “Back in my day we’d play on Sunday and go down the mine with a broken leg, a dislocated shoulder and concussion on Monday”.

8. Religion
Most people don’t have any anymore but over 60’s reserve the right to a gradual return especially if the church is putting on free food or more importantly, free booze. The logical extension of this process is the death-bed conversion, just in case.

9. Free Stuff
We deserve it and the rest don’t. They have to pay for it. Simple.

10. Working
What’s that? Hahahaha

11. Fashion
Back in the day when today’s over 60’s were dedicated followers of fashion, it meant something if you wore jeans and thongs. It meant you also wore a flanno and had a mullet which were quite popular for a while there amongst a certain demographic. Some over 60’s now feel comfortable with fashion faux pas such as wearing socks with sandals, a crime for which you can be shot incidentally. And for the over 60 ladies the transition from frilly and filmy to industrial strength is now complete.

12. Drinking
Once you crack the big 6 oh there is no reason to ever buy a drink again. If you find yourself in a pub in a shout with younger members of the community it is likely that they will tell you to take your hand out of your pocket when it is your turn to shout. This behaviour should not be discouraged. In fact it should be actively encouraged by constantly complaining about the bloody government and its treatment of the backbone (sciatica notwithstanding) of the community and you can’t make the pension go as far as it used to blah blah blah. And anyone who doesn’t think we’re the backbone, may we suggest a headcount (see Health).

13. Birthdays
As a youngster, birthdays involve waking up in a pool of your own vomit with a new face tattoo. The older generation is satisfied with more material but no less cheap thrills. Like for the mature man a trip down memory lane with a “look but don’t touch” pass. May we suggest a particular place that unnecessarily interrupts football games with displays of….and…..and beer.

14. Gifts
Birthdays (if it’s yours) are about receiving gifts. Unlike the economy, which many youngsters of a socialistic bent think is a zero sum game, gift giving actually is i.e. every time one gift is given, one is received. We over 60’s know which side of that equation we want to be on.

15. Cars
Over 60’s know that as phones are for making phone calls, cars are for getting you from A to B. Unlike with phones however, we like the toys that come with cars. But we are torn between getting the GT super sport pack or going on another cruise. Convertibles are a particular dilemma. These are for very young people but because most very young people can’t afford a decent convertible, special dispensation has been given to the over 60’s to buy them. Looking ridiculous in a convertible is an issue for people who want “the look” but is irrelevant to over 60’s who revel in not giving a stuff about what they look like (see Fashion).

16. Aging
This brings special privileges which are called brain fades or mental blocks or senior moments or CRAFT as in Can’t Remember A F—ing Thing moments. These involve issues such as going into a room then having to contemplate the exact reason for going in there in the first place.

17. Political Correctness
Over 60’s don’t do political correctness. It’s for well norked celebrities with their climate off-sets and private jets and bureaucrats, academics and ABC types who think they’re distantly related to Evonne Goolagong. If you take offence then put the bloody thing back before the cows escape. Now, did you hear the latest Irish/Polish/Kiwi/Arab/Jewish/Catholic (insert ethnic/religious group to be ridiculed) joke?

18. Politics
This is not relevant. Over 60’s know all there is to know about politics. From one me-generation (baby boomers) to another (the young), don’t worry, it’ll all be fine. We’ll spend our super and you can spend the tax we contribute. Oh that’s right, we don’t contribute tax anymore. Hahahahahaha.

Atlas Shrugged

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I have just finished reading Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged” and have to admit that I am exhausted. The book was published in 1957 and I feel like I have been reading it since then. It is by far the longest and most taxing book I’ve ever read. It has to be up there with the Bible but I haven’t read the Bible so the comparison is moot and I understand the English in Atlas Shrugged is a little easier to understand. Atlas Shrugged is over a thousand pages of tiny writing, tiny to the extent I couldn’t read it at night. I like to read in bed but either my eyes, my glasses or the bulb in the bedside lamp or combinations of all three were not up to the task.

If you know anything at all about Ayn Rand you will know she was a philosopher/novelist who also wrote many works of non-fiction. Her novels were vehicles for the promotion of her philosophy of objectivism. And didn’t she make sure the philosophy shone through. At regular intervals her main characters in this book are given the opportunity to expound on the virtues of the various facets of objectivism culminating in the main character’s 56 page speech to the people of America. Let’s see Leonardo Dicaprio or Matt Damon memorize that. I read the first few pages then the first line of each paragraph for the final 50 pages. That was hard enough. As she explains it:

“My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”

Fair enough. None of this compulsory altruism crap – conservatism with Adam Smith’s invisible hand wearing an iron glove.

The base line of objectivism relates to three axioms – existence, consciousness and identity. So all of those hippies who went off to find themselves were actually onto something although I’m sure they would be heading for Comrade Andrews’ Democratic Socialist Republic of Victoria and their soon to be legislated euthanasia laws if they knew what they were aligning with. When you think about it, why do you think about it and what’s the point. Who am I and why am I here even though I know I’m here and I know who I am, I think, and why is 42 the answer to the ultimate question of life the universe and everything. In my view, philosophy can be described in one word; one letter actually – “I”. So enough of that.

The most interesting thing about the book in my view, is the thematic parallel with what’s happening in Australia and other western democracies at the moment. Large numbers of millennials, bless them, (and their cold war warrior fellow travellers ) due to a glitch in the education system, have never heard of Venezuela, think Che Guevara was a heroic freedom fighter and somehow or other have common cause with clapped out leftists like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn and socialist wannabe’s (in the best Animal Farm tradition) like Bill (Mr Thompson) Shorten. I bet some of them even feel sorry for Kim Jong Un because he’s being abused by that sexual predator, warmongering, scumbag of an American president. No, not Bill Clinton, Donald Trump.

If you read the comments after opinion pieces in the Australian newspaper you may have noticed someone called “Chris” refer to Shorten as Mr Thompson plus a few other cryptic (and direct) references to this book. Ayn’s Mr Thompson is in charge of America and wants everyone to be brought down to the lowest common denominator where equality rules. Take a bow Bill, you’ve starred retrospectively in a book which figures in numerous lists of the top 100 books of all time but not the BBC’s list funnily enough. Perhaps because they recognise themselves in the book, along with most state run and indeed, main stream media and it’s not a complimentary comparison.

Shorten, sorry, Thompson and his crew spend the duration of the book either wreaking havoc on society and industry by implementing things like the Equalization of Opportunity Act which belies its name because of its restrictions on opportunity or disavowing any responsibility for the ensuing chaos. They all at one time or another, some multiple times, channel Bart Simpson with their “you can’t blame me, it wasn’t my fault, you can’t prove anything ”entreaties”. Meanwhile as the country and the world go to shit as the socialism experiment moves inexorably down the path of nationalisation, plummeting productivity and riots, the good guys start to disappear, go on strike actually, which of course, exacerbates the problem.

Any pimply faced millennial socialists who can read and have got well and truly into the book will eventually realise that socialism is really communism with fewer guns. But the Berlin Wall fell last century so we’re going to get it right this time, aren’t we comrades. That old saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is for squares, man.

I wonder sometimes what it would be like if the productive people ever did strike. I firmly believe that if the world was populated by empathetic wealth redistributors – you know, the earnest, green, humourless, virtue signalling, safe space seeking student types, redistributing an ever decreasing quantity of wealth, the human race would be extinct in a generation. Everybody would be hugging and nobody would be building anything.

There are a lot of people like this. They know who they are but they know not what they do. Didn’t someone rather famous say something similar once?

Status Quo

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Driving from Brisbane to the Gold Coast hardly qualifies as travelling but if it’s to see one of the greatest rock and roll bands of all time – Status Quo – on possibly their last tour, and certainly last in one regard which I’ll cover below, then I’m prepared to extend the definition. Besides, they came all the way from England so to drive an hour or so to see them seemed only fair. Incidentally, while sitting at our hundredth or so red light I was beginning to think this was not such a good idea. There are more red lights on the Gold Coast than the Reeperbahn, Kings Cross, the Rossebuurt, Roppongi, Patpong and the White House (during the Clinton era) combined. You’ll have to look those places up if they don’t all ring a bell. I’ve been in the same city as all of them except the White House. That’s how I knew.

The concert was held last night at the Star Hotel and Casino at Broadbeach on the Goldie and what an eclectic crowd that place attracts. Everyone from fake ID’d teenagers with their arses hanging out of the shortest of tight, short skirts to 90 year old Chinese grannies. Of course being a casino, the gambling obsessed Chinese are ubiquitous. The crowd that filtered out of the casino and into the theatre to see the Quo were more akin to an Australian Conservatives gathering (in appearance) although I don’t think the average Australian Conservatives crowd would know all of the words to Status Quo’s extensive back catalogue. There were a few outliers with grey ponytails, some sported by women, but since Francis Rossi cut his off a few years back it seemed like a rather superfluous gesture. And there were a few kids who’d been dragged along by their parents (or grandparents) as we had been known to do with ours some (many) years back.

There are some fundamental differences between a Quo/Stones/Eagles (our last three concerts) crowd and a Taylor Swift (for example) crowd, not least minor things like age, fashion, size (individual as opposed to collective) and willingness to pay exorbitant amounts of money for tickets although to be fair, that only applied to the Stones and the Eagles. But one thing is quite similar I assume, although not having ever been to a social media fuelled, hormone busting, like, best everrrr Justin Bieber concert I can’t be certain. Youngsters can be quite rude because many have not been schooled properly in common courtesies and oldsters can be quite rude because “I paid a bloody fortune for this ticket so I’ll come and go as I bloody well please…and spill beer on the person in the row in front as I squeeze past in the dark”. The young country singer who opened for Status Quo was very adept at embarrassing the latecomers, much to the amusement of the more polite section of the crowd. Take a bow Travis Collins.

The show was called “Last Night of the Electrics”. After this tour is finished it’s acoustic or aquostic as they call it, from then on. Not surprising really when you consider the number of shows they do and have done over the years (more than most) and the volume at which they perform. Their ears (certainly Rossi’s) must be mush. Just on the noise thing, the child bride and I saw them in 1976 at Brisbane’s now demolished Festival Hall. We were six rows from the front and my ears were still ringing when we took our seats last night, 41 years later. If Spinal Tap’s amplifiers go up to 11 then Quo’s go up to 12. Having said that, last night’s show was loud but manageable in the aural department but we were two rows further back in row 8 so that may have been why it didn’t seem as loud as in 1976.

Rather than “Last Night of the Electrics” I would have called it “Still Having a Bloody Good Time”. If I could magically transform my very modest musical ability into something a bit more respectable, to the extent that I could hold my own in a top echelon band, I’d want to be in this one. Of course I’ve said that every time we’ve seen the Eagles (five times) but that’s more from a technical excellence perspective than a fun perspective. I also thought it would be a hoot to be in Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers but now that Tom has left the building, it would hardly seem the same. No, when a bunch of musicians laugh at each other and take the piss when they (rarely) make a mistake that we mostly don’t even notice and then let the crowd in on the joke, that’s the band for me. None of this hunched over the instruments, terminally serious Radiohead bullshit for me. Or Eric Clapton demonstrating virtuoso capability but not uttering a word other than “thankyou” or cracking a smile for a whole concert.

I love that there’s no preaching and no sentimentality with these guys. There’s certainly banter and audience interaction but no preachy social justice warrior hypocrisy and promotion of pet causes. There can’t be too many diseases or inequalities left that don’t have some second rate celebrity’s name attached to them. There wasn’t even a mention of Rick Parfitt. Some bands would have put a telecaster on a stand in the corner or a cardboard cut-out or some such tribute on the stage. But they didn’t. But I reckon Francis did his own little tribute. At one point everyone else left the stage, even the drummer and Francis played the intro to a song on his own in semi darkness, a song Rick used to intro. Maybe I’m wrong – doesn’t matter because it works for me.

One more difference between 1976 and 2017. Back then, as soon as they started to play everyone stood up. Not such a big deal when you’re six rows from the front but when everyone in front of you stands on their chairs you have to follow suit. The cute but diminutive child bride was not impressed. Now, we (the typical Status Quo audience) prefer to stay sitting down. Some did get up and dance and good luck to them as long as they don’t dance in front of me. The girls with their Stevie Nicks hair-dos wave their arms around and blokes do Dad dances and think they’re cool. Even I know they aren’t. But as long as I have an uninterrupted view of the stage go ahead and act like a dork.

We got to the second and last song of the encore before the All Blacks front row immediately in front of us stood up. I thought the concert was over because it went dark all of a sudden but I could still hear muffled music, like it was coming from a radio in an adjoining room such was the totality of the wall erected in front of us. I looked at the woman sitting next to me (not the CB, the other side) and we shrugged our shoulders and stood up – what else could we do. No amount of “DOWN IN FRONT” which usually works at the cricket and football, was going to work here.

Brilliant show. That’s another tick on the bucket list.