"At Monash we played billiards and frisbee," reminisced Jon Faine. Billiards and frisbee? You don't play them. They are not games. They are distractions for simpletons "Oooooo look mama! The plactic, it fly!"
Now, Jon-Jon is a lawyer so he's not a complete imbecile. And it's not that I mind he was out getting a little exercise, exercise is good, but it's the way he said it. Almost skiting, he was, as if HE the great butch ath-er-lete, was out getting all rugged and bruised up with his roughneck chummies.
It's unlikely that was the case.
Frisbees are for bumbling clods who can't catch balls. Any idiot can catch a frisbee. Christ, dogs do it all the time. People catch frisbees because they can't catch balls. Balls are hard, come fast and can hurt. You have to be on your mettle to snag them agates (especially with some monster thug trying to put a lump on the back of your noggin). Not so frisbees! Buy a ball, you softcocks!
And billiards? Siiiiggghhh. Billiards is soooo boring. In the 1930s Australia suffered the Great Depression with everybody else. In the rest of the world, though, it was caused by the Wall Street Crash. Here it happened because every man jack was sat round obsessed with Walter Lindrum and his endless cradle-cannons. It can be fairly said that in Australia billiards caused the Great Depression. I'd rather watch sailing. Pool and snooker shits on billiards. Being good at both requires you to beat other good players. There is competition. Billiard players can't handle competition and slink off to dark corners of barely occupied parlours to sneak in surreptitious caroms with their gawky, talentless mates and mate-ettes.
Those who say "I play billiards and frisbee" are really saying "I am a blouser"
Hate mail to the usual address, by the way.
Posted by: Tony.T | 19 July 2005 at 14:42
I can't catch anything so I only played billiards. Unaustralian I am.
Posted by: Francis Xavier Holden | 19 July 2005 at 16:11
I bet you caused a financial crisis.
Posted by: Tony.T | 19 July 2005 at 16:15
Ha. I'd like to see you throw a frisbee as far as I can, or with as good precision, a skill acquired from years of daily practice blah blah blah.
(And I bet you couldn't catch one with as much aplomb as a labrador or with as much grace and agility as a blue heeler either)
And even better - these frisbees are 100% nylon.
Not hard - but tough.
Posted by: boynton | 19 July 2005 at 16:49
Pa! I'd flog ANY labrador in billiards.
Posted by: Tony.T | 19 July 2005 at 17:02
I'd hate to hear your comments on Hackey Sack (if that is the way it's spelt)Tony.
Posted by: Simon | 19 July 2005 at 17:02
How about that? I thought it was just something Yanks had made up.
Hackeysack.
It sounds stupid.
Posted by: Tony.T | 19 July 2005 at 17:05
The only time I was ever good at Frisbee was playing California Games on the Nintendo, only they spiced it up by calling it "Flying Disk". I could nearly throw the damn thing out the other end of the screen...
Posted by: Adsy | 19 July 2005 at 17:05
How about that! A computer game that combines two things I really, really dislike. Frisbees and computer games.
Posted by: Tony.T | 19 July 2005 at 17:07
Walter Lindrum, what a champion. Managed to beat the world, even though he had a gigantic misshapen head.
Steve Vizard, Roy Slaven, that guy on the Inventors, George Grljusich, and Jon Faine.* What's with lawyers in the entertainment industry? You don't see anyone going to Jimoein to draw up a commercial lease, so why does every second lawyer think they can be entertaining?
*(That blonde with the big baps on Big Brother last year doesn't count, she was only a law student)
Posted by: carneagles | 19 July 2005 at 18:13
Consider this moved.
Looks like Wally's been swilling that stuff Ken Griffey drank in the Simpsons softball episode.
Is George a lawyer?!? Christ, we're in more trouble than I thought.
Posted by: Tony.T | 19 July 2005 at 18:19
"The only time I was ever good at Frisbee was playing California Games on the Nintendo, only they spiced it up by calling it "Flying Disk". I could nearly throw the damn thing out the other end of the screen..."
Adsy, Adsy, Adsy. I was a master at that game, too. Oh dear, the memories are flooding back faster than a frisbee to a forehead. For shame.
Posted by: BourbonBird | 19 July 2005 at 19:20
Good grief! Gamers!
Posted by: Tony.T | 19 July 2005 at 19:34
Nude hurdles. Now there's a sport that takes balls.
Tony, I'm good to go re the thing we discussed. But OK to pop in an image as well?
Posted by: Nabakov | 19 July 2005 at 20:32
Tone, don't you worry about California Games. The same brilliant game even had Hackeysack (Footbag) on it!! Coincidence??? I think not...
Posted by: Adsy | 19 July 2005 at 20:48
Ahh.. California Games "Flying Disc" what a sport. Almost as good as the BMX on the Master System version when it played a tinny version of Louie Louie and told you that you'd suffered a broken neck when you land upside down.
Posted by: Adam 1.0 | 19 July 2005 at 21:08
There are no anonymous billiard players out there cos you've always gotta ask for that second cue ball (you know the one with the little black dot). Which made me wonder why wasn't that second cue ball a different colour? Is hitting an ivory coloured ball really so friggin disconcerting?
As for frisbee I have never understood the phenomenon that is 'Ultimate Frisbee'. Seems like normal frisbee but with baseball caps. If they made it a bit like lacrosse and you can actually have major body contact and sticks it would be cool...
..and Aerobies were cool. Big metal frisbees encased in rubber. Chuck 'em 80m and slice someones hands off OddJob style.
Posted by: Russell Allen | 19 July 2005 at 22:01
Perhaps when he says "we played billiards and frisbee", he means some sort of combination of the two, e.g. throwing a frisbee and catching it with their teeth, occasinally substituting a billiard ball. That would be fun.
Posted by: Clem Snide | 19 July 2005 at 23:18
Bar billiards rocks though. You know, the one with the little mushrooms on the table. It's a great leveller - you always play it pissed so everyone is equally shit at it.
Posted by: hungbunny | 20 July 2005 at 03:17
tennis is the sport you really should be slating Tony. It's bloody awful and played by posers. And richies.
Billiards ? Well, it may get interesting when the balls are placed strategically inside socks and then swung around ones head and aimed at some particularly obnoxious bar room barracker.
Posted by: Brett Pee | 20 July 2005 at 05:36
I think we have a theme up and running.
Alcohol makes things better. Billiard balls are best when used to unteeth oafs. Frisbees are more fun with razor-sharp edges.
Violence rools OK!
Posted by: Tony.T | 20 July 2005 at 11:57
OddJob, or the Feral Kid in Mad Max 2.
Posted by: carneagles | 20 July 2005 at 12:05
I prefer Odd Job. He had class. The kid was just a grubby urchin with a talent for mischief - he lived in a hole in the ground, for Christ sake!
Posted by: Tony.T | 20 July 2005 at 12:11
Odd Job is a legend. His best movie is definitely 'Death Dimension' aka 'Black Eliminator' (That entire title is on the video just in case you were confused).
You just can't beat a movie that also contains Jim Kelly from Enter The Dragon (the bloke who looks like Eddie from Tekken) and the very talentless George Lazenby.
Who's Mad Max 2 got? Who...That Gibson bloke...Whatever.
Posted by: Russell Allen | 20 July 2005 at 15:48
Don't sell MM2 short, Russ. It had Mike Preston from The A-Team. So at least it's got that going for it.
You know, George Lazenby is married to Pam Shriver. And I liked OHMSS. It was funny.
Posted by: Tony.T | 20 July 2005 at 15:53
"Jon-Jon is a lawyer so he's not a complete imbecile" - This is complete rot.
There are many lawyers that are complete imbeciles. St Gough for example was a lawyer and he managed to screw up the country in three short years. Little Johnny Howard is also a lawyer and a stupid lying rodent to boot.
The thing about lawyers is not that they are not imbeciles - many of them are - but that they are, almost all of them, turds.
Posted by: SB | 20 July 2005 at 15:55
Lawyers pronounce fine "fahnn". That's enough to rile me.
Posted by: Tony.T | 20 July 2005 at 15:56
Don't forget Lazenby was also in Emanuelle 5-8. Kept those ones quiet didn't he. But you gotta respect anyone who's married to a person who cockney rhyming slang for money. Shame Ayrton Senna's dead on that front.
Posted by: Russell Allen | 20 July 2005 at 16:10
Why? Is Ayrton slang for hair product?
Posted by: Tony.T | 20 July 2005 at 16:11
Pam Shriver = Fiver
Ayrton Senna = Tenner
Posted by: Russell Allen | 20 July 2005 at 16:18
No, I knew that. I like prefer Ayrton for Henna. I'm easily amused, you understand.
Posted by: Tony.T | 20 July 2005 at 16:23
Ah, I enjoyed MM2. Not as many Toranas as the first Mad Max, but less Tina Turners as well. And Gibson was moderately tolerable back then, probably because there isn't as much strict orthodox Catholicism on display as there is in Lethal Weapon 2.
And don't get me wrong, that's taking nothing away from Goldfinger either - who can forget Pussy Galore and her fleet of deadly Piper Warriors, and a nuclear device which looked exactly like an old thermal photocopier?
I've got an old Time magazine from 1977 at home with Lazenby on the back cover selling Benson and Hedges durries. Still playing off his woeful Bond performance 10 years after the event.
Posted by: carneagles | 20 July 2005 at 18:00
I reckon MM2 is terrific, too, Carna. It's just that I reckon OJ is better than Ferral Kid. I wonder what the kid is up to these days. He hasn't acted for yonks, and I'm sure with a name like Emil Minty, he gets severely beaten up everywhere he shows his face.
I thought the nuclear device was a beer fridge.
Posted by: Tony.T | 21 July 2005 at 13:12
I can't catch a frisbee either. I hold those who can in high esteem!
Can't trust anything that flys at your head.
Posted by: nailpolishblues | 21 July 2005 at 13:14
DUCK!
Posted by: Tony.T | 21 July 2005 at 13:14
I have a friend with a metal plate in his cheek due to a frisbee accident. He was playing 'Ultimate' (a very Californian name for a game) and went the smother on an opponent's throw. Ended up with a depressed fracture of the cheekbone and will always set off a metal detector.
Posted by: Bruce | 21 July 2005 at 17:16
Fractured cheekbone? Metal plate?
I bet he went off injured. Wuss!
Posted by: Tony.T | 22 July 2005 at 14:22
"I wonder what the [feral] kid is up to these days. He hasn't acted for yonks"
He got married to Bec (Spartacus) Cartwright yesterday. I hope he sorted out that dodgy horizontal tan-line on his forehead (that he picked up during Davis Cup) before his big day.
Posted by: Russell Allen | 22 July 2005 at 14:43
Excellent.
And the bouquet chopped a bridesmaid's fingers off.
Posted by: Tony.T | 22 July 2005 at 14:48