Glutbusters

The Cruellest Cut

A few weeks ago, my friend who works at the over-punctuated Age [melb!ou*rne] magazine sent me an email, desperate for a letter for their letters page, and hinting that I might even win a prize for my efforts. I obliged, and it was published today. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, they cut the last couple of sentences.

Goodness me, how terribly original. A Melbourne magazine running a feature on Barry Humphries in which he shares his thoughts on a city he hasn't lived in for over twenty years. Honestly, for a magazine which purports to understand how Melbourne ticks, you'd think you'd be able to lay your hands on someone a little more relevant, more interesting, more... resident. Not to mention that the continuing deification of Humphries and his ilk by publications such as yours makes readers under the age of thirty feel like they don't even exist. If your intention with Melbourne magazine is merely to provide a vehicle for advertisers to sell expensive watches to cashed-up baby boomers, fine. But please don't pretend to offer us anything different.

I didn't get the prize.

Not At All Cool

It's not very cool to not like Big Brother. It's very easy, in fact, to be made to feel like some humourless irony-free, pro-censorship friend-of-Helen-Coonan's if you speak out against it.

But I really, really don't like Big Brother. For mine, a show that imprisons people and controls their environment to put them under unspeakable pressure so that they reveal the very worst of their personalities to entertain us, well, just feels somehow wrong.

I know it's capable of producing lovely moments. By all reports the reunion of David and his boyfriend was very moving. And having lots of people cheering the gays is certainly a wonderful thing. But I don't think that's enough to make up for what we do to these people.

I know that Gretel is a very talented host. I have in the past admired the way she is in complete control of the post-eviction interviews. And to make that much on-air time even vaguely entertaining is quite an enormous achievement. Well done to her. Still not enough.

I know that many claim some sort of academic distance - "I enjoy this not as base entertainment but as sociological study" - as if this somehow removes them from the orbit of the loudly baying, furiously texting bogans that drive ratings up. As if academic appreciation means that they are no longer complicit in the uglier aspects of the show.

It does not.

And I know the housemates are usually stupid - I don't think that makes them fair game. It has a bit of the old roman gladiator thing about it: these folks were unfortunate enough to be born as slaves, so let's make them fight in a ring for our viewing pleasure. I can't help but wonder if entertainment based around the exploitation of the less fortunate (because they're stupid) doesn't somehow make us worse as a society. Because it's basically The Running Man with fewer wisecracks.

So I'll say it once, and I'll say it loud. I don't like Big Brother. I'm glad it's over for another year. I hope it doesn't come back.

Judge me if you must.

Hooray For Australians!

Oh, look. The Queen has hosted a reception at Buckingham Palace for prominent Australians. Somehow Clive James and Germaine Greer found their way onto the bill.

Tell us, Clive. What piercing insights did you share with "Aussie Liz" about the country you left twenty-odd years ago to "interview" "celebrities" on your "talk show"? (And what ARE The Weather Girls doing these days, anyway? I'm simply DYING to know.)

There's lots of us here. We're starting a colony.

MARVEL AT HOW HE CUTS TO THE QUICK OF OUR NATIONAL PSYCHE! (we are a travelling people!)

And then...

What can I say, nice house.

GASP AT HIS MASTERFUL USE OF SARCASM AND UNDERSTATEMENT TO CLEVERLY MOCK OUR HEAD OF STATE (while bowing to her and calling her "Ma'am").

And Germaine, you dedicated anti-authoritarian, you. What did you have to say of that wrinkly old bitch who has your beloved homeland (where you haven't lived for twenty-five years) by the short and curlies?

She has got good taste in art, and she knows the value of every single painting down to the last fiver. (And also, "thumbs up, Aussie mate!")

BE ASTOUNDED BY HER CUNNING COMBINATION OF WORLDLINESS AND CONDESCENSION! (as she curtseys (belligerently) to "Her Maj").

CHEER AS SHE "STICKS IT TO THE (WO)MAN!"

BE AMAZED AT HOW EASILY SHE STRADDLES TWO CULTURES!

Three cheers for Clive and Germaine!

Special Guest Tirade

My brother is in China. In my time overseas, his bitter rants and flowery descriptions of football games kept me going. Good to see his patriotic rage is undimmed even though he lives abroad. I received this email the other day. It's pretty much verbatim (I added paragraphs and punctuation - capitals can bugger off, I don't have the time).

been reading about this student union thing jeez howard is a fuckin prick, some cockhead lib senator (scroll down) said if students need student unionism they will pay for it themselves voluntarily. well you're first year scraping every last penny for booze you're hardly gonna cough up 200 bucks for unionism. but someone needs to give the unions money and god knows lord fuckpants and his idiot follower costello (typical of howard to completely fuck over his longest loyal supporter, - sums the bloke up really) aint gonna.

aus universities are a disgrace. i learnt next to nothing in that 3 years except how to do as little as possible and still get reasonable marks. sure, we dont want unis to become 'job skills workshops' but if you are studying business perhaps some sort of practical knowledge/experience may be handy. then you can relate your degree to the world outside. and a challenge? not once was my brain challenged in that time, (sport and the law with sam cusumano the notable exception) except to rote learn a shitload of info the week before exams.

i suggest that all hs grads be strenuously encouraged to take at least one year (i suggest 3) to work/travel/booze/sleep before going to uni. the overworked bgs line that if u don't go straight away you may never go at all is a massive mistruth of WMD proportions. "the masses will believe a lie, if you make it big enough". then the work hating first years, more mature/less naive/more driven, can be challenged and educated by inspired teachers (steve james) and a demanding curriculum and everyone benefits.

Get Your Hand Off It

I just heard Queensland Independent MP Chris Foley on the radio proclaiming his opposition to the death penalty, yet declaring that he felt a minute's silence to remember Nguyen Tuong Van in the Queensland Parliament would be offensive to Australia's war veterans.

It's this sort of ra-ra, Anzac-spirit political grandstanding that gives me the shits. As if a minute's silence is an honour that must be earned through some sort of noble toil, like there's a Luna Park-style, "you must have done at least this much for your country to get this silence" sign through which only those worthy may pass.

Mr Foley, Chris if I may, a minute's silence is not a reward for effort, it is not an honour bestowed only on those who have proven themselves, by whatever scale you choose to randomly apply, to deserve it. A minute's silence is about us as a group, or a state, or a nation, showing our respect, our appreciation, our grief.

So I'd say in Nguyen's case, it's perfectly appropriate. Yes, as you so incisively point out, he is a convicted drug dealer. But he is a man who has been put to death for what in our country is a minor offence. By any scale, mine at least, he has received a punishment grossly disproportionate to his crime. What your parliament was doing was demonstrating its respect and its sadness for the incredible price that Nguyen and his family have paid for one mistake.

So make a stand, you petty bastard. Walk out of Parliament (with the Opposition) if it makes you feel like you're a bigger man. I know you country independents have your work cut out for you getting column inches, so I hope your weekly self-googling turns up a few more hits. Perhaps though, in the future, you could dedicate your self-righteous indignation to something a little more worthwhile.

Get Your Rants On

There are few publications, print or otherwise, that I loathe as much as MX. The sight of hundreds of people gleefully picking up their copy ("Awesome, a free newspaper, how generous. Now, what shall I consume next?") for their train/tram ride home makes me want to somehow obtain a job lot of cheap, readable paperbacks (I don't know, Dickens or Tim Winton or something that rollicks along - nothing too heavy) and stand by the little MX dispensers saying "no, don't take that, take this. It'll respect you in the morning". Unfortunately the lure of a double page spread on Lindsay Lohan's tits is too much to resist for most (including, sadly, me).

But there's plenty of shit out there (I got a free subscription to The Bulletin - yawn) why spit such vitriol at MX?

Because it is shamelessly a dumbed-down version of the Herald-Sun. Let me say that again, it derives its content from a newspaper that already appeals to the worst elements of human nature with techniques of generalisation, jingoism and straight-out selfishness, but DUMBED DOWN. And it doesn't even have the (mostly shonky but occasionally bold) journalistic ethos of the Hun.

Because it demonstrates our willingness to consume what is little more than advertising, just because it's free.

Because it is able to blithely report, say, the death of 10,000 (admittedly brown) people in a landslide in India, or another 3,000,000 Africans infected with AIDS, in a sidebar entitled DOOM AND GLOOM.

Because over the page from Doom and Gloom is BORING BUT IMPORTANT, a handy little sidebar precis of such sleep-inducing events as the election of a new Bulgarian Prime Minister, or a coup in Latin America. A tacet perpetuation of the idea that, sure, things are going on around the world, but you don't really need to worry about it as long as you have A NEW TV (see full-page Megamart ad, opposite).

Because it has the nerve to describe itself as "concise, upbeat, intelligent and sexy". Read: "able to be read on the train while texting and eavesdropping on the conversation across the way, no bad news (because there isn't any, really, when you think about it), covering Europe in a paragraph, and heaps of tittie. (Celebrity tittie if you're lucky)."

And because we seem to love it.

Who Gives A Crap Friday

You can almost set your watch to it. Every year, around Spring Racing Carnival time, Barry Humphries pops back home, the Australian need for international validation kicks in and the press fawns all over whatever pithy little one-liners appear at the front of his motorised tie-rack of "wit".

Gather round then, little Melburnians, and let good old Uncle Barry tell you what your city's all about.

Few people know that I always travel with a copy of Melways street directory - an increasingly chubby volume - in my hand luggage.

"How delightful! Even when travelling the world in a lifestyle infinitely more glamorous than ours, he carries a secret little reminder of the quaint little city that hasn't been his home for thirty-odd years. And he's right! The Melways is becoming rather cumbersome. He knows us so well."

At a cafe table in the Piazza San Marco in Venice, or a ski lift in Switzerland, in the garden of a ranch in Argentina or a beach in Denmark, I peruse this well-thumbed guide to my birthplace

"What a marvellously humble man. All those outrageously exclusive locales with their rich American tourists and $14 coffees and all he can think of is Melbourne. Those foreigners don't know what they're missing out on."

and I dream of Hawksburn, Rosanna, Aspendale, Gardiner, Dennis and Spotswood. The still-to-be explored heartland of my favourite city.

"Look, dear. He knows the names of all those suburbs that Judy and Daryl from Canberra had never heard of. He really is just like us, isn't he? Aren't we lucky that such a wonderful fellow thinks our city worthwhile."

He can say whatever he likes, I just don't know why we listen.

A Wig Night Out

I spent Saturday night at The Production Company's production of Kiss Me, Kate at the Arts Centre. I haven't been to a song 'n dance show in a while, and I'd forgotten how incredibly hammy and cheesy tremendously colourful and fun musical theatre could be. I particularly enjoy that very distinctive style of "acting" that chorus members of musicals get up to, a sort of hello-there-other-chorus-member-let's-have-an-animated-yet-silent-
conversation-because-really-we're-the-very-best-of-friends-and-
okay-now-I'll-head-over-here-to-my-mark-for-the-big-number-we-
came-on-stage-for carry-on that would be utterly insane in any other context. But I love it. That, and its counterpart, the goodness-me-we've-just-finished-our-duet-and-broken-from-our-young-
talent-time-pose-but-the-applause-is-still-going-and-now-we-have-
to-mime-a-little-bit-of-business-before-my-next-line act.

The show: not bad. For Cole Porter there were a few dud numbers. But the crowd: spectacular. God, when the inner-eastern musical theatre folk come out to play... A turtle-neck here, a string of pearls there. Silver fox waves here, Trude-and-Jude haircuts there.

So the Glutbusters awards are as follows:

Best Dressed (Male)

The guy standing next to us at interval. From the bottom:

Black shoes, black slacks (so far, so dull)
A pale blue and white vertical striped shirt (okay...)
A red knit sweater (it might have been a vest. I couldn't see, because topping it off was:)
A charcoal blazer. With light pale blue and pink candy stripes.
Glorious.
Oh, hang on, did I mention that he had THE MOST OBVIOUS TOUPEE IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD atop his head? Hair. Just there. No discernible root system. No sideburns. It just stopped. Tan. Waved and swept towards the back.

Best Dressed (Female) and the Glutbuster Encouragement Award (including tear off voucher for cheeseburger, small coke and small fries) for the most spectacular outfit of the evening

Production Company chair Jeanne Pratt (wife of the hilariously-named (though no-one has the balls to laugh to his face) paper tycoon Dick Pratt). Again, from the bottom:

Black shoes.
Brown slacks that extended from the ankle (pretty regulation), under the lowpoint of the overhanging breast, and came to rest around the area where the bottom of the boob joins to the torso (where, indeed, they couldn't go any further unless they were adjusted to pass over the breast)
A brown jacket (more a jacklet) that just met the aforementioned pant at its highest point.
White shirt with black buttons.
Bow tie.

"Bow tie? Dude, did you mis-type that?"
"Yeah, maybe I did. I'll type it again, being extra careful":

BOW. TIE.

And she was greeting everyone as they went in. That's right, short of decking the security guard at the stage door and running fancy-free through the dressing rooms pausing only to slap some sense into Marina Prior (and I toyed with the idea), the only way into the theatre was past the chocolate gatekeeper that was Jeanne.

Shudder.

Ugly On The Inside

I, along with others, have made no secret of my disdain for Lawrence Money and Suzanne Carbone's daily Diary yawn-fest in The Age. No less worthy of disdain is Mik Grigg's Spy2 page in the Sunday version, a roundup (with photos) of the dazzling premiers and glittering openings graced with the presence of Melbourne's toothiest young post-private-schoolers. Why The Age thinks anyone actually gives a shit about the champagne-soaked exploits of pastels like Paige, Ellie, Hollie and Annabelle ("no, it's with two Ls and an E. Omigod!"), I have no idea. Frankly, I could care less.