Glutbusters

Call To Arms

By now, regular readers will be aware that I am directing a show. Being a small theatre company, we do pretty much everything on a shoestring. This doesn't mean it looks cheap, quite the opposite. But it does mean we have to call in occasional favours.

So... if you have any of these items, and would like to be immortalised in the program of Just Pretending's production of City of Angels, please let me know.

• Guns. We need three. 1940s style revolvers. No automatics. (perhaps we can pick up Victoria Police's surplus);
• A shoulder holster for one of the guns;
• 2 belt holsters for the other two guns; and
• 2 truncheons (ooer, constable, got the handcuffs? etc).

Inquire within: peter AT glutbusters DOT com.

Blogging In Absentia

Good god, haven't I been absent a long time. Normally I don't bother with these touch base posts (if you can't say anything nice/good etc...), but a friend of mine told me about a friend of hers who doesn't know me yet still reads this. I was so thrilled at the thought of someone who I don't know personally actually reading this that a sense of obligation to other readers was stirred and, well, here we are.

I have been frightfully busy at the moment, directing a musical for the theatre company I have (with a few others). I love musicals, but they're a shitload of work to direct.

Not to worry, the bulk of work will be over soon and I will be able to tell all about:

• my Grandmother's 90th birthday party, at which I found out that she was once engaged to be married before she decided it wouldn't work, reneged, and has ever since denied the engagement altogether;
• how much I love being from an Italian family when they do things like hold a surprise party for my young cousin who has leukemia, and about 400 people turn up to a church hall to eat a donated spit roast, pay ridiculous amounts of money for a crap North Melbourne jumper, and dance to bad cover versions of Santana's "Black Magic Woman";
• my seemingly neverending quest to recover my copy of The Latham Diaries (hardcover) from the person I lent it to and subsequently forgot. The only lead I have, after a couple of email broadcasts, is that it was recently seen amongst the debris in my aforementioned grandmother's retirement community bedsit; and
• the fact that my tennis game has gone to shit and I haven't won a singles in three weeks.

Won't that be fun for everyone?

UPDATE: I have located my Latham Diaries. I will place it next to my recently reclaimed Dark Victory in the "Rage Building" section of my library.

Ninety Years Young

Some things I learned about my grandmother Moo at her 90th birthday party on Sunday:

1. After defiantly divorcing my grandfather in an era when mothers forbade their children from playing with the children of divorced parents, she was briefly engaged again. Then she broke it off, declaring the match profoundly unsuitable. She denies to this day that the engagement ever existed. She was friends with her jilted fiance until he died a few years ago, leaving her the twice-yearly dividend on his Coles-Myer shares, a windfall that she spread around her grandchildren "for petrol" even after I'd finished uni, got a job, and sent my car to the wreckers.

2. She received a letter of congratulations from John Howard for her birthday and declared she'd joyously tear it up. This was some relief, as for a short period before she went to live in a home, she was subsisting on nothing but brandy and crackers, not having the energy or the inclination to cook. This took some toll on her mental state, and for a brief time she declared that when the election came round she'd vote for Howard "because he's never done anything wrong by me". In fact, she defiantly informed us, his pre-election tax cut for pensioners had allowed her to buy a smart new pantsuit from Fella. Now she is back to ranting about how marvellous Gough is.

3. She is in no danger of dropping off any time soon. Her sister is 99 and still going, and most of her siblings died in their 90s. Bless.

UPDATE: The 99 year-old sister had a fall and died just the other night. She was ready to go.

4. Her short-term memory not being anything like it used to be, she will no longer remember if I haven't visited her for a while. This makes me want to visit her more often. And I will.

Happy birthday, Moo.

Half Forwards...

A guy I went to school with committed suicide last week.

We were never what you'd call mates, but when you go to school with someone for six years you have quite a few shared experiences. He played on a flank next to me in the footy 3rds. We did house aths. His little brother is one of my little brother's best mates. I taught his other little brother at a school camp some years back. My mum knows his mum from when they were young and she had a maiden name. At the moment, all that comes to mind are cliches: they seemed just like a normal family with normal family stresses, tensions, and joys.

I can't comprehend what they are going through at the moment.

His death is set against a backdrop of a society in which young men, in alarming numbers, are killing themselves. Beyond Blue informs me that statistically, one male farmer does so every four days. Anecdotal statistics I have picked up in the last week or so suggest that men are taking this course of action in greater numbers than motor accidents are killing them. One of my very favourite teachers from school, as caring and intelligent and approachable a man as you could hope to meet, has had four former students take their own lives over the past ten years. That's from just one school.

The thought that the next person to do so might be someone even closer to me I find utterly terrifying. I feel like calling all my male friends and telling them that if they want to have a beer or something, I'm always here. My father did exactly that when he called me the other night to tell me what happened, and he has done it for twenty years, every time we have ever spoken about suicide: "Pete, if you ever think of doing something like that... Please, just talk to us".

I hear also that the overwhelming majority of male victims of suicide have some form of depression. This guy was one of those. Beyond Blue suggests that this is not uncommon. Is this something to do with the grin-and-bear-it culture boys are brought up in? I don't know. I suspect we are touching on issues far more complex than I can deal with here.

I just find it all very, very sad.

Jet + Set = Me

I am going to Sydney today.

There, I will stay here, dine here, and attend these at a venue made famous in Bec's love poem to Lleyton.

I will not be taking interviews.

It's In The Blood

Regular readers of this blog (both of you) will know of my dedication to the Melbourne Football Club. Here it is in earlier times.

This photograph has been pinned to my father's pinboard at his various offices for as long as I can remember. That's me on the right, and my middle brother, Tom, on the left. We are at Merimbula, at Easter, around the mid 80s, and we'd just had a kick with our new birthday footy.

Note the following:

1. The fact that we are not twins apparently did not preclude my mother from dressing us in matching Adidas Rome, sports socks, boardshorts, Swatch watches and Dees jumpers.

2. Our healthy glow and hopeful faces - our cheerful outlook on life has not yet been dashed by Jim Stynes running across the mark to deny Melbourne its first Grand Final berth in 27 years, nor by the flogging Hawthorn gave us when we finally got there in 1988.

3. Our unfortunate haircuts.

What the photo doesn't show you is that Tom by this stage could already kick and handball with both feet and would frequently come off the victor in the endless games of "Marks" we played in the backyard. "Marks" consisted of us standing at opposite ends of the garden, throwing the ball up somewhere in the middle, and running at each other, trying either to take the mark or to inflict maximum pain by delivering a knee to the ribcage.

There was also an indoor version played on our knees with a fluffy footy in the hallway. It was much better for body on body work.


Go Dees.

It's Official

I had a birthday yesterday. Over the past few days I enjoyed the following celebrations:

• A day at my parents' house in Black Rock consisting of a hit of tennis (6-3 to me), two swims at the beach and a barbecue with all my extended family.
• A night away at a B&B in Hepburn Springs (includes massage).
• An evening of pizza and beer with my friends. Then we ate (home-made) lemon tart and drank port.

I did not enjoy the following celebration:

• The Commonwealth Games Closing Ceremony

I was fortunate enough, however, to receive the following gifts from family and friends who quite obviously know me better than I do:

• A new thermos for the football
• A Dees guernsey
• A (home-made) polo shirt
• An ingenious camping table that folds up into a little bag
• Some glossy and fantastic cook books entitled "Thai" and "Curries"
• The DVDs of the Murray Whelan series, featuring the hilarious David Wenham in the title role
• A new stylus for my turntable
• A book entitled "How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization"
• A stripey jumper that I would never buy for myself but which looks tremendous - the best kind of clothing gift
• A copy of The Age Cheap Eats 2006
• "Cry, the Beloved Country"
• Two bottles of booze
• A new tea towel
• Membership (and an accompanying handbook) to Bio-Dynamics Tasmania
• A big bag containing coffee, chocolates, olive oil and a Buffy CD
• A box of very cool Pink Panther greeting cards
• A new handkerchief

It was officially The Best Birthday Ever.

Regular rants and vitriol will resume tomorrow once I've read the paper and turned my brain back on. (I have a week off so expect more action than usual).

A Rare Treat

Being a white, middle-class, heterosexual male, I rarely experience the dubious thrill of unprovoked vilification. Sure, I've dished out a bit of lip to the nuns and fundies outside the East Melbourne Day Procedure Clinic on the way to work, but really, their retorts are hollow.

Well, that all changed the other day when, strolling through the little complex on Bridge Road, I was called a poof. My verbal assailant, in a brilliant ploy to avoid detection, cunningly disguised the word in a cough, Slider-style. Admittedly, I was wearing white loafers*, a choice of shoe that could, at a stretch, be described as "poofy", particularly as they matched my white polo and the pinstripes of my checked pants. But sure as hell not by a guy dressed in graffiti-d gear from head to toe and accompanied by a little trucker-capped mate. It was as if their Mum had taken them into Myer and said "make my twin boys look trendy. Same clothes, but different colours, please".

The thing is, I could flick a condescending look over my shoulder and shake my head at their folly before trotting back to work with a story to tell (read: blog). Not so easy for the genuine poofs out there, who from the same experience would draw yet another piece of evidence that, when it comes to Australia, they're still pretty much up against it. So power to you, gay boys and girls. I'm not going to say I feel your pain, because how could I, really. But maybe now I get it a little more.

* Reports that I was actually on my way to purchase white leather cleaner for said loafers and a can of scotch-guard for my new suede wedges are utterly unfounded. And so what if I was? Homophobe.

If You Need Me...

... I'll be spending the weekend on one of these:

Drinking these:

Eating this:

Isn't she beautiful? (when barbecued medium-rare).

Then reclining here:

Come and sit on Uncle Peter's lap, kids.

Suffer.

We Bought A Lemon (Tree)

This is Lionel:

Lionel is a lemon tree.

When we bought him he bore 18 glorious lemons. It was a citrus extravaganza in our house for weeks. (Not true - we actually pissed most of them away on G&Ts).

But now Lionel's little lemons just bud then drop off while barely embryonic, despite me depositing an astonishing amount of urine on him morning and night.

Please, if someone knows why, or can point me in the right direction (a googling informed me I am watering him either too much or too little - thanks for nothing, you useless tit of a search engine) I would be very appreciative.

Stop the carnage.

Save Lionel.

In The Nick etc

Thank Christ. Something to blog about. Virginia tagged me.

FOUR JOBS I'VE HAD

Elvis Impersonator
Barman to Seamus Heaney (he nicked a glass)
Property Manager at a suburban real estate office
Television Critic

FOUR MOVIES I CAN WATCH OVER AND OVER

Caddyshack
Stand By Me
LA Confidential
Jurassic Park

FOUR PLACES I'VE LIVED

Black Rock, Melbourne
Blackrock, Dublin
Collingwood, Melbourne
North Carlton, Melbourne

FOUR TV SHOWS I LOVE

The Sopranos
Scrubs
Law & Order (vanilla only)
Buffy

FOUR PLACES I'VE BEEN ON HOLIDAYS

Italy
China
Cohuna
Houseboat on the Murray

FOUR OF MY FAVOURITE DISHES

Drunken Noodles at Cookie
Mum's Ki Si Min
Curry Laksa at home
My Nanna's Peas

FOUR SITES I VISIT DAILY

Bureau of Meteorology
Anonymous Lefty
Set Daily Puzzle
Overheard In New York

FOUR PLACES I WOULD RATHER BE RIGHT NOW

My friend Sus's house at Airey's Inlet
Monterosso al Mare, Italy
Cohuna Lawn Tennis Club
Freycinet National Park, Tasmania

FOUR BLOGGERS I'M TAGGING

Jessculture (will we ever meet?)
Jellyfish (to get her off her arse)
Glutbuster 2 (not strictly a blogger, but GB was a joint enterprise originally, so we'll give him a go)
HandcuffedLightning

There will be no emails. I think we can all live with that.

And So The Viva

Q: Peter, didn't you used to have a blog that you posted interesting and occasionally saucy writings upon?
A: I did, but I fell into an interminable period of slackness where I just stole stuff from my friends/family and posted that instead.
Q: I see. And will you return?
A: I intend to. Meanwhile, enjoy my friend Chris' tale of the oral examination he underwent in the process of obtaining his doctorate from Oxford (England).

And so the viva. The thing to understand about Oxford is that it is very rarely OXFORD. In four years here I have never met anyone named Terence, been invited hunting or challenged anyone to a duel in the chapel quad (we only duel in mob quad darlings). I could count the number of balls I have been to on one riding-gloved hand and to my knowledge none of my friends own a manor house or castle of any serious size.

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Drunken What Now?

I'm back. There's bugger-all going on in the world that's of any interest to me at the moment, so let's ring in the Glutbusters New Year with one of mine and the Redhead's favourite recipes.

After being thrice-blessed with the joy that is Cookie's Thai Drunken Noodles, we did a bit of googling and ripped it off. Try our adaptation tonight. Impress your friends. I don't have a shiny cookbook photo but trust me, it's unreal. And easy if you're a cooking hack.

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Ho Ho Ho etc

I'm heading down to Tassie (look out womenfolk, I have map of Tasmania jokes and I will use them), then to Moggs Creek.

More tirades to come in the New Year.

Have a very Glutbusters Christmas. I know I will.

Tomorrow's Post Today

Apparently a union of regular readers of this blog (membership: one - thankyou Tom) have banded together and demanded more frequent posting. Damn it, I'd love to give it to you, but who has the time? I've gotta earn a crust you know (and hopefully the rest of the loaf - I'm working on it. Boom boom).

I'm going to Meredith this weekend, alongside much of Melbourne's blognoscenti, so I won't be posting. Or will I? Hoh, what mystery have up my sleeve? What would I be saying if those filthy dope-smoking hippies had got off their arses and installed wireless internet at the Meredith site?

"Where do we park?... do we know where so and so is?... does anyone have tent pegs?... is that man in implausibly tight jeans and oversized sunglasses Tim Rogers?... can me up!... fuck I wish my chair had arms and a stubby holder and a little pocket for my ciggies... rock on!... dude, I haven't seen you in years!... who is that stunning lady?... can!... totem tennis? why yes, I'd love to play... i just don't understand why anyone would ever wear shoes... can!... $35 each, mate. Sweet... can!... these guys are fucking ace!... are you feeling anything?... how good is this weekend?!... let's go on an adventure to get water... how good is water?... good god, you have the softest skin I've ever touched... i love you, so-and-so, you are seriously one of my best mates in the world... these guys are awesome!!!... dance? let's!... yeaaaaaahhhhh!!!!...let's go talk to that guy in the headband... man, that is the greatest headband I think I've ever seen... shall we roll another one?... solid night, team... where's our campsite?... i love our Kombi... do you smell petrol?... snore.................... do you smell petrol?... I love Sustagen... bacon and egg sandwiches are perhaps the greatest culinary invention of our age... tai chi? bring it on!... dude, tai chi's really hard, let's eat some barbecue shapes... what's that smell? ah, note to self, change underpants at least once in three days (this actually happened last year - I'm not proud of it)... can? what is it, 11? why the hell not?!... let's drop by Torquay for a swim on the way home... I love the ocean..."

Deal Breaker

If what went on this morning doesn't make you feel for Nguyen Tuong Van's mother, brother, friends, family; if it doesn't make you question the point of fantastic economic prosperity if the price is the state-sanctioned murder of other human beings; if it doesn't convince you that when we send people to the gallows, or the chair, or the chamber, or the injection, we take a backwards step as a society;

if it doesn't just make you sad to see a 25 year-old guy killed;

then I'm not sure we can be friends.

Rocketing Into The 80s

Me and a gang of keen shoppers went to Camberwell Market on Sunday morning. The ladies were after clothes. I, however, had set my sights a little higher, and openly declared that all that would satisfy me, alongside a bag of cheap crap I will never need again (Exhibit A: the faux-wood, bottle-shaped bar lamp), was this:

An original Nintendo Entertainment System.

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Ladies' Night

The other night I had some friends over for dinner. Five ladies, as it turned out. You wouldn't know it from this blog, but in a dinner party situation I generally talk a lot. But with these five girls, I found myself unable to contribute much. Instead, I was in the unfamiliar position of listening for most of the night (I know, I should do it more often - I'm learning).

These are some of the things we (they) talked about:

FLOWERS

Yes, sending them is a cliche. This does not matter. Girls still want them. One exception: under no circumstances should they be purchased after midnight from the 24-hour florist on the corner of Lygon and Pigdon Streets, North Carlton. This is irrefutable evidence of infidelity, guilt, or incapacitating drunkenness.

BLOW JOBS

(light obscenity warning from here on in)

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Wild Bore

Right. Enough of the self-righteous ranting of the last couple of posts. Now it's time for some good old-fashioned personal anecdoting.

I swim. Or barely-keep- myself-afloat-in-a-splashing-whirl-of-arms-and-legs-that-defies-the
-most-hardened-stroke-correction-coach. But I do it a couple of times a week. Often with a friend who is something of a web-celebrity (or the innocent object of a deranged man's crush, who can tell?) Anyway, the highlight of these "swims" is the spa after. A chance for actual conversation rather than spluttered inanities between laps.

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Not Always As They Meme

I got tagged. People usually reveal this with an air of weariness. I am delighted and have been long anticipating the moment when a fellow blogger knew of me and was curious enough to tag me. Fluffy, you're a goddess (and note her exquisite use of the C-bomb).

Thus... 20 Peter titbits:

1. I am tremendously proud of both my brothers.

2. I am scared my astonishingly low boredom threshold and short attention span will prevent me from ever being really good at something.

3. I am the best car boot packer I have ever met.

4. I hate one-on-one conversations, get nervous when one is imminent, and try to avoid them.

5. I cry when I think of The Dees winning a Premiership.

6. I can add columns of times (eg 1 min 30 sec + 3 min 55 sec) really quickly. (= 5 min 25 secs).

7. I wish I played more tennis.

8. Marvin Gaye's What's Going On is my favourite album of all time. By a long way.

9. Me and David Bridie once spent an afternoon at the Merrijig pub drinking beer and watching our Dees beat Footscray.

10. I have been picked up on a bus and taken home by a girl solely because of the jacket I was wearing (she told me this). The flipside of this is being converted to boxers after having my briefs laughed at in a romantic situation.

11. I have composed and refined over a number of years my Best Actor/Screenplay Oscar speech. I will thank the Nomads for teaching me what drama is all about. They know who they are.

12. The Redhead is the most loving and caring person I have ever known.

13. If I don't spend a significant amount of time (at least one year) living in Italy I feel I might regret it for the rest of my life.

14. I have no idea how to look good in photos.

15. I have quite a shocking temper.

16. I wear a mouthguard-type thing to bed to stop me grinding my teeth together. Mouthguards of this style have become universal television shorthand for "totally unsexy and non-romantic" - see, eg, CrashBurn and Six Feet Under Season 2.

17. I can't set foot on a beach without going for a swim.

18. I once snapped cruelly at Jellyfish on Elgin Street. I regretted it immediately but I actually think it made us better friends.

19. I have all the Tintins, many of them in more than one language (I don't even need to speak the language because I know pretty much exactly what's in each speech bubble).

20. I have a lemon tree called Lionel.

Tagging HandcuffedLightning (if only to get her off her arse) and Adam 1.0 - he intrigues me.

Late Nights, Quick Bites

Sorry for sporadic bloggage.

When I haven't been doing this:

I've been doing this:

(author, 5th from left)

Or this:

Normal transmission will resume in November.

A Very Glutbusters Grand Final Day

0500. Is it time to get up yet?

0530. Please. Can I get up now?

0545. Please please please can I get up?

0600. Wake. Lie in dark waiting for alarm. Grand Final day is better than Christmas.

0630. Alarm.

0655. On bike. Getting pissed on. Heaps shitter than Christmas.

0715. Arrive at MCC Members Gates. Walk around perimeter of ground to back of queue of blueblood toffs lining up for their first footy game of the year. Claim moral highground.

0720. Still walking. Passing hall of famers. Leigh Matthews' moustache even more implausible on a 10-foot bronze statue.

0725. Arrive at end of queue, only metres from where I parked my bike. Marvel at how many young members have the collars of their polos upturned.

0800. Queue begins to move. Collars remain firmly vertical despite stiff breeze.

0815. In ground. Monster elderly members en route to brilliant seats - front row of level 3.

0850. Receive ticket. Go home.

1100. Receive call from friend with two free tickets that she can't use. Swear. Remember workmate who is a Swans fan (and lecherous Paul Roos lover), and her 12-year-old daughter even more (though less on the Roosy, more on the Kirky). Offer them as possible candidates to receive tickets. Friend announces she will ring a couple of other people first. End call. Crisis of faith - should I have lied and said I didn't have tickets and then passed them on to let two fans go to the Grannie? Could I have begged? Should I have pleaded? Have I failed the gods of football by not laying down my dignity to get a fan a GF ticket?

1130. Friend rings again. She is plagued by similar doubts. Offers tickets.

1135. Call work colleague. She does loud squeals down the phone. She tells her daughter, who does loud sobs.

1140. Shit! Should I have thought of The Redhead first? To whom to I owe first obligation? Her or football?

1230. Amidst toffs again as I arrive to collect the tickets from friend at the Athanaeum Club. Tickets not there. Head to ground.

1240. Tickets have arrived. Back to the club.

1245. On way to the ground. Tickets in wallet - the dreams of a little girl now in my hand. Pretty comfortable with "hero" status.

1300. Meet colleague and daughter. Daughter head to toe in swans gear. Tracksuit, jumper, scarf, 9 badges, face painted. Weak with excitement. Hand over two tickets to paradise. Or hell on earth - we'll see.

1310. Shit! They were AFL Members' tickets! The horrible possibility that I have lured a young girl from Hurstbridge in the hope of seeing her Swannies win a flag only to be denied at the final hurdle by an overly-officious AFL person rears its ugly, ugly head. More panic.

1320. In ground. SMS from workmate confirms they are at their seats and that she has already knocked off a couple of burbies to calm her nerves. Who could blame her.

1331. Delta subjects us to her ugly, ugly voice. I'm all-a-quiver. (False alarm, just gas).

1339. Australian Idol finalists perform Waltzing Matilda. Peter from Glutbusters heard to exclaim (a little too loudly) "could you butcher this song any more you talentless shits?" Stands by it in face of stern glares from fellow members.

1356. Michael Bublé. Why?

1400. Dame Edna. Gold.

1432. National Anthem. Roar. Goosebumps.

1435. Perhaps the greatest football game I have ever seen begins.

1530. Father and I divided in our loyalties. Me the Swans. Him the Eagles. To be more precise: him Chris Judd.

1700. Leo Barry takes the biggest mark of the year. Me and Dad exhausted yet buzzing in the knowledge that we have just seen one of the all-time greats.

1710. I weep. Again. Deep down, just a little bit, and I'll never admit it, and I have no idea what you're talking about, I wished I barracked for Sydney. A sneaky look at Dad suggests he might feel the same.

1800. Call from colleague. Daughter heard to say "best day of my life". Turned out the seats were near workmate's brother, and they were able, when the siren went, to exchange glances and remember their father, a Blood from way back, who died earlier this year.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. God, I love football.

It's The Little Things You Do Together

Being in a play, a good one, anyway, with a good cast, is like falling in love.

In the early rehearsals, you're all getting to know each other. Did he really laugh at that? Does she always wear those clothes? Could there really be another person that into Stevie Wonder? All you know at that stage is that these people love the same thing you do - the rest is a mystery. But all it takes is one significant shared experience, say, a rehearsal weekend at a beach house, and that curious attraction turns into full-blown, first-day-of-spring, dancing-hand-in-hand-through-a-field-of-daisies romance.

That's where I'm at now. I am HOT for my cast. I've had play crushes before, but this is a play crush on fifteen people. All I want to do is spend time with them. And then when I do, all I want to do is nothing - laugh, talk shit, sing songs. When I'm on my own, I idly wonder what they would think of my CDs, my clothes, the fact that I stink of petrol because my Kombi is trying to kill me slowly with fume inhalation. We have our own little private jokes, shared stories, facial expressions. I am besotted with them, all of them. Besotted with the group, with the feeling that is only there when we are. God, I feel unfaithful to The Redhead just thinking about them.

It's this feeling that keeps me coming back to plays and musicals. Sure, I love the performing, but the magic of a group of people being thrown together to create something (hopefully) great is something that I've never felt anywhere else. "Fun" isn't the word, though it's the one I use most often to describe it. But the short answer is that you don't know what it's like until you've tried it. And once I did, I couldn't get enough of it.

But ours is an impossible love. At the end of October we'll finish the last of our five shows (five shows? All that work for five shows?) and that'll be it. Some of us will keep in contact, some of us won't. And even if, by some unprecedented miracle of post-show relations, we all regularly get together, it won't be the same. The thing that binds us together so strongly is only fleeting. But, like a love lost, it'll always be with us.

Bloggers Are People Too

On Sunday night, I met a blogger for the first time. Actually, that's not strictly true. I have indeed met bloggers before. Some of my best friends are bloggers. However, this was the first time that I had met someone who I knew solely in a cyber-sense before meeting them. Now following is the dialogue that played out in my head after our mutual friend hit me with "Oh, this is Travis Johnstone*. You guys know each other, sort of."

Oh, God. That's Travis. From those blogs that I read and like. What do I say?
What do you normally say when you meet someone new?
Umm... hello?
Dude, you just said that.
So what next?
What's he into? Talk about that shit.
I don't know. *thinks back to recent blog posts*.
No! Don't talk about blogging, that's too nerdy.
But he's a nerd, he'll appreciate it. Man, I'M a nerd.
No! You're not a nerd. You're one of those cool internet guys.
There are cool internet guys?
Look, you can really start building yourself a rep here. IF YOU DON'T FUCK IT UP.

God, the stress. From memory I think I babbled fairly incoherently about football. That old chestnut. But not entirely inappropriate.

In conclusion, it's weird coming face to face with someone whose life you know so much about. Well, I found it weird. I'm sure it'll get less weird. Travis was nice and all. And though I didn't get to talk to him for nearly as long as I would have liked, a tentative arrangement was made to get stinking drunk and probably bashed at some time in the future.

So if you come across me in the real world, be aware that I am easily startled, yet will be friendly if treated kindly and/or fed booze.

*Not his real name.

Gee, Is It 1975 Already?

Today I was "working from home", which in the code of my particular industry, generally translates as "sleeping in, reading the paper and running personal errands". And who should I glimpse in a passing car as I was cycling about but this man:

That's right. Benny Andersson of Abba.

"But", I hear you say. "That photo was surely taken in the 1970s, somewhere between 1975, when Benny and the gang performed 'I've Been Waiting For You' and 'So Long' on Swedish TV program 'Nygammalt' and 1979 when Abba performed 'Chiquitita' at the 'Unicef Gift Of A Song' concert held in the National Assembly Hall of the United Nations, shortly before Benny and songwriting partner Björn Ulvaeus took a much-deserved break in the Bahamas to help Björn recover from his divorce from bandmate Agnetha Fältskog. He must look much older now".

And you know what? Normally, I'd agree with you. Except for three factors which irrefutably confirm that the man I saw was Benny Andersson circa 1975-79.

1. He was wearing a pale blue skivvy, a look favoured almost exclusively by pop stars of the 1970s. (Admittedly, Björn was fonder of the skivvy than Benny, but we'll let that one pass.)

2. His hair retained its distinctive wave, and his eyes that dreamy shimmer.

And if you still doubt:

3. He was driving a Volvo.

Case closed. So what is Benny Andersson of 1975-79 doing in Melbourne?

Is he:

a. Earning a quid in suburban pubs playing Björn in the touring "Björn Again" show?

b. Teaching a short course at the CAE entitled "How To Write Catchy Pop Songs And Bag Hot Swedish Starlets?

c. Tweaking some of the numbers for Broadmeadows High School's production of "Chess"?

d. Collaborating with Shannon Noll on "Waterhole", an original musical based around an outback kid's journey from town pansy to Oz Rock superstar to washed-up smackhead?

e. ...?

Love Shack

The Redhead and I have commenced The Great Cohabitation Adventure. So last weekend we moved. Hence the absence. My computer was either in a box, out of a box but not plugged in, or out of a box and plugged in but without internet access. And I don't like conducting my digital life from unfamiliar computers. It just feels dirty.

In the process of moving I discovered that there is probably nothing that makes me angrier than carrying large, heavy, cumbersome objects in and out of trucks.

I should have had an inkling about this one. When me and the Redhead had to move a barbecue up two flights of stairs (for the afternoon. Get that? It was only FOR THE AFTERNOON), I swear to god, she was deliberately and maliciously manipulating that thing to make it impossibly painful for me to continue, yet in her evil genius she had cunningly constructed a mechanical arrangement that made it impossible for me to stop - any weakness on my part and I would be pinned to a wall by a barbecue and slowly crushed to death. It ended with me furious, sweating and covered with all that grease-saturated sand shit they have in the bottom of them, and it very nearly sounded the death-knell of the relationship. And I tell you, if she had've pulled the pin half way up the second flight, I would have happily walked away.

But I forgot that, and manfully declared myself willing to lug crap for TWO DAYS from house to new house. Couches, tables, benches, boxes, desks, barbecues (will I never learn?) shelves, stereos, pots (cooking and gardening), a television, four stereos (FOUR!) and a European washer-dryer. When the Redhead dropped something, it was her fault for being a girl and thus incapable of tough labour in the hunter-gatherer sense. When I dropped something, it was the Redhead's fault for pushing/pulling too hard/softly.

Next time I'm paying some burly, wife-beatered men to do it. Fuck my masculinity. The burly men can have it. I'll wrap kitchen goods in paper and neatly pack them in a box.

Happy Birthday, Helen

My Mum turned 53 today.

Three years ago, at the dinner party for my her 50th, there were seven other women (time as friends in brackets): her two best friends from primary school (42 years), her sister-in-law (28 years), the three other mothers from my playgroup (22 years), and a friend of the family from up the road (16 years). There was another best friend from primary school, but she died some years ago from a combination of massive alcoholism and multiple sclerosis. Every fortnight or so for pretty much twenty years, Mum would visit her wherever she was - various hospitals, facilities, boyfriends' houses. Often the friend would be drunk, sometimes abusive, but Mum kept visiting, and visiting even more when the friend was dying in a hospice. On the first anniversary of her friend's death, Mum went to see the parents, but they turned her away. It wasn't a date they wanted to recognise, so now Mum remembers it on her own.

This loyalty and dedication is a theme that runs through Mum's life. She has worked in the same hospital in the same job, for almost twenty-five years. About fifteen years ago she took up power-walking to stay fit. She has gone three times a week, every week, ever since, and prefers her slow and steady approach to personal fitness to my mystifyingly ineffective twice-a-day-at-the-gym-for-three-weeks-then-nothing-for-five-months strategy. Having raised three sons she has spent pretty much every weekday morning for twenty years buttering vita-weats and making rolls, every weekend ferrying one or more of us around to sporting venues, and most evenings turning the dinner down so she could pick us up from training, or rehearsal, or the train station when we couldn't be arsed walking TEN MINUTES from bus at the end of the street.

Apparently in the early-90s we were seriously broke and mortgaged to the hilt. I never knew. I still had new footy boots and saxophone reeds and Stussy pants, and went on school trips, and pocketed ten dollar notes on my way out to the movies. We still went on holidays to Lorne, or to Cohuna, or, for two magical weeks one September, to Surfers'. I didn't know that Mum was budgeting for every last dollar so that her boys could do all the things they wanted to do. I didn't know that our credit cards were long maxed-out, or that we were a year and a half behind on our school fees. And I didn't notice that she and Dad never went out for dinner, or got takeaway, or bought any booze except the occasional bottle of brandy.

Mum's youngest boy is eighteen now. The financial pressures have eased, and she has the time and some of the money to do all those things big and small that she has postponed or given up for the last thirty-odd years. She can have a glass of wine with dinner, or go out for breakfast, or get the couches re-upholstered. She can sleep in on Saturdays, buy a new camellia for the garden, and go to the theatre. And her and Dad are going to Paris for their wedding anniversary - thirty years after they were last there on their honeymoon.

My Mum has dedicated more than half her life to making sure that her sons got all the opportunities they could, and she deserves every little pleasure that comes her way.

Happy birthday, Helly. We love you.

Coming Soon...

Blogging is a shitload of work. Like, it's not a full-time job or anything (there's no cheap Liptons teabags, for starters), but you have to think and stuff. Me: lots of think, no so much with the stuff.

Brainwave!

What if I made up a post of all the undeveloped posts? Not only would it constitute a post IN ITSELF, it would give me the chance to figure out if they were any good.

Thus, I present:

1. An Ode To Caroline Wilson

This one is going to be a bit of a tribute to one of the gutsiest journos around, The Age's Chief Football Writer. It'll laud her for being a woman in a man's world, and for not sinking to the level of Footy Show types like Sam Newman who hate her because she refuses to be a part of the self-congratulatory wank that is commercial football coverage. And she's a great journalist who keeps breaking big stories. You're a legend, Caro.

POST IT? Yep.

2. I Hate Big Companies

This one comes from the bile-spitting rage that Apple worked me into when I had to spend twenty minutes on the phone to them THREE TIMES just to get them to acknowledge that they're received my fax. It was borne of hate, thus it is probably best it didn't find it's way on, because it would have been a furious rant. And I like Apple. And though pretty much all multinationals are arseholes... to be honest, when I'm heading down the coast and I hear the siren song of KFC's Popcorn Chicken, well, who among us can resist?

POST IT: Nope.

3. Dolly Parton And Powderfinger

A foray into music criticism. I've just got to get a piece of software that can crop MP3s so I can blog them. Then when you listen to the intros of Dolly Parton's "Joleen" and Powderfinger's "JC" you'll see that they're EXACTLY THE SAME. Seriously. It'll freak you out. I can see the headlines now: "Oz Rock Gods Pinch Riff From Big-Titted Country Singer". It'll be huge.

POST IT? Shit yeah. Dolly Parton rocks.

4. "Amsterdam Bomb Sirens"

That title is a scribbled note on my desk. I can see now that it doesn't have the legs to be a post, so I'll clear it up here and cross it off the list.

In Amsterdam, they have air raid sirens. They test them on the first Monday of every month. They're really loud.

Yeah, that was never going to make it. Unless I worked it into some clever little cultural differences / travel diary thing. But there's a billion of those just about old pricks driving round Italy on scooters, so the last thing the world needs is me rabbiting on about it. We'll let that lie.

POST IT? Ah, no.

5. Footballers / Sportsmen And Their Shit Attitude To Women

Probably going to take the form of a Lonely Hearts Club. Photos of happy-looking footy /cricket players. Likes: partner-swapping, text messaging, speed, gang rape. Dislikes: small tits, accountability, women. I won't give too much away cause I'm pretty keen on this one. Could also be artfully woven in with 1 as part of a broad comment on gender in sport. Or could be a vicious diatribe. Wait and see!

POST IT? Yeah! Go social commentary man!

6. My Nanna

Cause she's awesome. Could go one of two ways: funny anecdotal stuff about how she worked like a trojan at our tomato bottling day, despite being in her mid-80s. Or serious, triumph-over-adversity kind of stuff about fleeing Italy in the 50s with nothing and coming to Australia to start a new life. Either way, rad lady.

What a woman. (Sorry about the cropping - had to remove someone).

POST IT? Yes. But follow with post about other grandma in interests of family unity.

7. Experience Boggle

In which I coin a new phrase for the new millenium.

Experience Boggle: the social game in which middle-class twenty-somethings try to outdo each other in terms of who has the most unique life-shaping experiences. Speak Portuguese? Well, it doesn't mean shit if one of your mates does as well. I'll have to be in a fairly cynical mood for this one.

POST IT? Yep. Note to self: change names of friends.

8. Pastels: A Field Guide

A while back, I dropped the word pastel into a post about the silly tarts who pose for Mik Grigg in her heinous Spy2 (now Exposé) column in The Sunday Age. I call them pastels. This will be the amateur pastel-spotter's field guide. In all good bookstores.

POST IT? Subject to research plan at Spring Carnival.

9. Degrassi Junior High

Damn it, that show is just so AWESOME that there has to be material there somewhere. Could incorporate the other cinematic turning-point of my youth: North Shore ("On a small stretch of coastline as powerful as a man's will, Rick Kane came to surf the big waves. He found a woman who would show him how to survive, and a challenge unlike any other." TELL me you're not PUMPED!)

POST IT? Yes, but first buy entire Degrassi DVD collection for "research".

I'll get to them. Just sit tight.

200,000kms Of Good Times

My car died a while ago. A burly man came with a big truck, took it away, and turned it into a cube. It was a 1982 Sigma. Sky blue. Metallic. Heaps sexy. Check it out.

Ain't she a beauty?

My late Sigma is a rare concrete example of personal nostalgia. Because it was a piece of shit. It leaked, and thus stank when the rainwater festered in the centre section for a week after a shower. It was only occasionally reliable, and thus not strictly reliable at all. It did 0-100 in about a week. The front indicator was held on by hundred-mile-an-hour tape. It had a one-speaker stereo with a broken tape deck and a radio that forgot presets if the engine wasn't on. The front bumper was falling off. The rear bumper was falling off. It shook violently at 50, 70, 90, and later 60 and 80 Ks an hour. Its indicators frequently broke / flashed double time / didn't flash at all / glowed dimly. It had no heater, no airconditioning, no rear demister, a front demister that only demisted about a magazine-sized area just adjacent to where the driver most needed visibility, and it made a SHITLOAD of noise. And guzzled petrol. Leaded. And oil. Which it dribbled onto the ground.

Get the idea?

But damn, now that it's gone, that car has assumed an almost mythical romanticism. Remember those drives down the coast? (My redheaded friend: it overheated). Those luxurious sheepskin seat covers? (Redhead: they stank of festering rainwater). The capacious boot? (Your mother spilt milk in it in the early 90s and the odour remained). "Bah!" I reply. "The Sigma is the enduring symbol of my lost youth! You have a heart of stone, redheaded one!"

Interestingly, since getting rid of it, I have learned that in the parlance of the suburban drug dealer, "Sigma" is code for cocaine.

PERSON A: Yeah, g'day. I'm calling about the blue Sigma in the Trading Post.
PERSON B: Righto.
PERSON A: I was just wondering, is it a Chrysler?
PERSON B: No, mate. It's a Mitsubishi. (The marque of the Sigma designates different types of cocaine - Ed.)
PERSON A: Sweet. How much again?
PERSON B: Two hundred.
PERSON A: Sweet. Might come round and have a look. I'm after five if that's alright? (Grams of Sigma (cocaine) - Ed.)
PERSON B: Yep.
PERSON A: Sweet.

And so on. Pretty cool, huh?

But I didn't always think that. I used to agree with the Redhead. I can remember cold, rainy days, when I closed my eyes and BEGGED for a little asian car with a demister, a heater, a CD player. No personality? Who cares? I'm freezing my nuts off on the threadbare sheepskin in this old piece of crap! And it smells of piss! Give me something reliable. Something so cheap that I can buy spare parts of the shelf at K-Mart. God help me, I wanted a Daewoo.

Sorry. The point. Personal nostalgia. Yeah, the point is that the Sigma was a piece of shit. I knew it then, I know it now. But it was MY piece of shit. I was Cameron to the Ferris of my friends. I had a piece of shit. And they envied it. So now I remember it fondly. Like an old friend with whom I shared wild continental adventures before she succumbed to consumption or some other suitably romantic affliction. And, in the Sigma's honour, I have procured another old, noisy, unreliable piece of crap. A Kombi. At least it's got a bed in the back.

PS And I cranked the Sigma past 200,000. Sweet.

Who Am I Kidding?

So I guess the arrangement with these blog things that everyone's talking about is that I set out some sort of goal or something. Ideally, I would be, like, this really incisive guy who wrote about media and politics. But funny, too. But not so funny that you don't get the message. "Yeah," people (world leaders / filmmakers / sports administrators) would say. "That Peter guy from Glutbusters has his finger on the pulse. I'm going to implement his humorous yet razor-sharp observations on Australian life and culture into my next world-changing policy document / Kevin Bacon film / major rule change."

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