After Grog Blog

HAILSTONES AS BIG AS HAILSTONES

SOLIDARITY, THE MUSICAL

Guess where we had a union meeting.

Today we met at Hisense Arena.

Where we sung the team song: We Are TAFE Teachers.

We are TAFE teachers - my friends
And we'll keep on fighting - till the end
We are TAFE teachers
We are TAFE teachers
We want a pay rise
Because we deserve it
That's for sure!

Rousing stuff. Queen would have approved.

The Who played Hisense Arena in its previous incarnation as Vodaphone Arena. In a circuitous jump of serendipitousness, We Are TAFE Teachers took a My Generational cue to end up as We are T-Teachers. True.

Then, another blast from the past. Blast from The Past is a Ringo Starr album, and the song went like this:

Ev'rybody's talking about skills reform, higher fees, productivity, contestability, private providers, HECS in TAFE, privatisation, reformation, underpaid, overworked, not safe, casual work, pay justice parity, no trade off, security, no more OTRP*

All we are saying is give TAFE a chance
All we are saying is give TAFE a chance

Tricked you. Lennon has a lot to answer for.

* I dunno.

For no other reason, other than I was there. Here is is a photograph of the new rectangular stadium in Swan Street across the road from Hisense. If you build it, they will take a dive.

Just up the road from Fats... I mean, Shane Warne the Musical, there is a building. Not just any building. 100 Collins Street, 8th floor, is where my orthodontist had his surgery. "Come on through, Anthony."

YOU KNOW WHAT WE DID LAST SUMMER?

VANN

THAT DOLMIO GRIN

Sluggo Authentico? It's hard to believe a story this chock-a-block full of laughs is not a pisstake:

Man fined for penis in pasta jar

A MAN caught by police with his penis submerged in a pasta sauce jar was still pleasuring himself while resisting arrest, a court has been told.

Police drew their weapons after New South Wales man Keith Roy Weatherley, 46, led them on a brief, slow-speed car chase, the Newcastle Herald reports.

Weatherley attracted police attention while he was parked in a no-stopping zone near Nobby's Beach on October 26, Newcastle Local Court was told yesterday.

Police thought he might have a weapon because they saw him doing something with his hands in his lap, the Herald said.

Instead, they found him partially clothed with his genitals in a jar, a police statement said.

That's when the pursuit began, the court was told.

When Weatherley was stopped, he refused to leave his car and four officers used batons and capsicum spray to get him out.

They found a 750mm jar around his penis and said Weatherley attempted to continue "pleasuring himself in between bouts of wrestling".

A search of his car uncovered pornography, a homemade sex aid, women's stockings and a Jack Russell terrier.

Weatherley pleaded guilty to offensive behaviour, resisting police and disobeying a police direction.

He was convicted and fined $600.

Thanks, Ross in Den Hague:

Boete voor masturberen in pastapot

Een Australische man heeft een boete opgelegd gekregen omdat hij in zijn auto zat te masturberen in een pot pastasaus.

AUSTRALIA, YOU'RE SPRUIKING IT

Claire Sutherland of the Herald Sun, you should be ashamed of yourself. This is not a review, it's an advertisement:

Australia, you little beauty!

HE SET himself an enormous challenge, but Baz Luhrmann has pulled off an incredible film in Australia.

The film begins with surprising slapstick and trademark Luhrmann over-the-top humour - a scene featuring Jackman giving himself a bath with a bucket is pure beefcake and proud of it - but settles into a compelling and moving tale that traverses war, race relations, class and the Stolen Generation.

It's a movie with a message, but Luhrmann provides the audience with no shortage of thrills, from a cliffhanger cattle stampede to the bombing of Darwin.

Kidman and Jackman are perfect together, Jackman's broad speaking drover a perfect foil to Kidman's snooty English rose.

Australia features some of the most beautiful photography ever seen in an Australian film, from the Bungle Bungles in the Kimberley to the Northern Territory in the midst of the wet season.

A love letter to the Australian landscape and our history, Australia has international blockbuster written all over it.

And in case you were wondering: yes, it's produced by Twentieth Century-Fox.

GET THE 'NAC

Penguin is about to release a book.

The Footy Almanac 2008: The AFL Season One Game at a Time

Relive the joys and sorrows of another year in the life of the people's games with The Footy Almanac 2008.  Our motley collection of straight-talking footy fans has banded together to write about what really matters - the on-field action, not the off-field dramas!

Every match, including finals, is reviewed with passion from the grandstands, the barstools and the couches of Australia.  It's football as you know and love it.

Like most every other footy fan of my generation, the first Aussie Rules books I read were And the Big Men Fly by Alan Hopgood, The Great Macarthy by Barry Oakley, The Club by David Williamson and The Coach by John Powers. The latter is a chronicle of Ron Barassi's 1977 season coaching North Melbourne, in which North and Collingwood conspired to do Powers a ridiculous favour by having the Roos win the premiership via a grand final replay. Is it possible for Powers to write a book about Dean Bailey and Melbourne?

Since the 1970s, though, I can't remember reading a book about football, apart from those esteemed daily tomes published by the Fairfax family and Rupert Murdoch. That changed recently when I acquired The Footy Almanac, a collection of articles written by a collection of writers known collectively as the Almanackery.

Behind Footy Almanac are John Harms, who you will have read in The Age and seen on ABC's Offsiders; and Paul Daffey, also from the Age, who you will have heard on ABC radio and seen in Ardmona, where he is extremely popular, Wangaratta, Warnambool, Wedouree and even Wullewa... sorry, Mullewa in WA. Both contribute their share of games, too. Harms, the angry man of football, unleashes the full savagery of his short sentence structure on Geelong matches, while Daffey tries, and almost succeeds, in hiding his allegiance to the COR (Cult of Richo).

Naturally, the first thing I did was read about the Melbourne wins. Slowly. Savouring. Every. Moment.

Five minutes later, I got stuck into the rest of the articles. There, among other cultural touchstones, you will discover more Richo, prosciutto, parma-cide, BTO, the Buffalo Springfield, the Odyssey, National Lampoon's Vacation, Kryal Catle, but no fairy-tale ending, not for mad-Kat Harms, anyway.

The Footy Almanac, while not yer great literature, is nevertheless a terrific resource to add to yer footy library. But you know what is wrong with it? I mean really wrong? There are only two of them: Footy Almanac 2007 and Footy Almanac 2008. There should have been a Footy Almanac for every year since 1897.

POD CAST

Do you want perfect upsidedown eggs?

Of course you do.

Then get a pod.

STRANGE SUIT

If Billie Holiday was not dead, and instead was having lunch in the Heidelberg West Subway and happened to glance out the window, she would choke on her parmesan and oregano six-inch with extra chitlins.

WHAT'S GOLD IS NEW

A sensational new blog!

No, really, this blog has it all.

• Soothing colour scheme.
• Updated more often the Crash Craddock's blog.
• Three columns.
• Ninety thoughts per day, each completed within the mandated 4 minutes.*

* Excludes time off for weather, injury and spelling mistakes.

Here.

BUSTED

You frock up, off to the races, a flutter, couple of drinkies, meet a nice policeman... and wake up the next day, probably hungover, to find yourself bawling, bent over, tits out and under arrest on the front page of the country's biggest selling daily newspaper.

Have a nice day.

Oaks Day off the rails with train chaos

PUBLIC Transport Minister Lynne Kosky has demanded a full inquiry after thousands of furious Oaks Day racegoers were stranded yesterday.

Trains between Flemington and the city failed and tens of thousands more people had peak-hour trips home thrown into chaos, with the same overhead power line fault disrupting services on the Craigieburn, Sydenham and Upfield lines.

FOURTH TEST: TAIL 'EM UP!

I'm with Monty:

The team that jags the toss is the only one that can possibly win the game.

And Spanky:

Test win rides on toss of coin

AUSTRALIA'S final chance to save the series begins today on a new ground built in the outskirts of Nagpur. The last time the teams met in this neck of the woods the Australians took advantage of a grassy pitch prepared by local officials disgruntled with their governing body.

No such luck has attached itself to Ricky Ponting and his not especially merry men; instead they will be presented with a pitch closer in colour to John Faulkner than Bob Brown. Experts say the surface will break up within three days so the toss will be crucial, especially for the visitors.

And Monty again:

Geez I hope we win the toss in the last Test.

In short, if it all goes right - win toss, Gambhir out, set target, Krazy ambush, hold catches, take wickets, India folds - then who knows, easy, we might just pinch a win and square the series. Wouldn't that be nice. Pity the track will be a road. Any word on whether Ganguly has chucked his toys out of the cot this time? It was always on the cards, wasn't it: India go one up, then lay out dead strips to guarantee we can't get them out.

Maybe they will play Talks With Elbows. Hope they do, they forfeit, Straya win, court case, fun, games, shenanigans. The sort of entertainment we've been served the last two series has made sure it is only a matter of decades until Straya v. India is the only Test series in town.

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KRAZY EIGHT #

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PRIMATE'S RATES #

Ponting barracks for the Roos, and he's bald. The back page is dedicated to Ponting.

It's Ponting now, by the way, not Punter.

ELECTROMOTIVE HORSE

Alessandro Volta

Count Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (18 February 1745 – 5 March 1827) was a Lombard physicist known especially for the development of the first electric cell in 1800.

Cupdate! Strictly speaking, it's the Melb'n Ghup.

TRICK or TRACKSUIT?

RETROSPECTIVE MAN

What is up with Tim Lane? That he draws a parallel between the overturned Test match in 2006 and the overturned AFL match in 2006 is fair enough, comparisons are grist to the jouralistic mill. (Lists, too.) That he arrives at his condescending-whitey conclusion based on an imaginary "show of hands" which would show "strong support" for the AFL overturning the result of the St Kilda versus Fremantle match is stepping up to the line in the sand and drawing a very long bow.

Rules just made to be broken?

Here are two cases in which sports administrations clearly broke their own rules, yet the public response in each was different. It's probable this is largely an expression of the perception of administrative motive.

Because the AFL was seeking to arbitrate a fair outcome, its abuse of its own rules was regarded as not only excusable, but justified. The ICC, on the other hand, was seen to be pandering to a powerful lobby group and its abuse of its laws is regarded with contempt.

But perhaps we are inclined to be more understanding of crass pragmatism when it occurs in our own backyard than we are when a cricket team from the subcontinent is involved.