A Short History of Corn, via Rooty Hill

Say what you will about Furner (god knows I have), the man is a fucking innovator extraordinaire. Who knew the hamster wheel spun so sensationally inside his boof head? Fed up and frustrated with losing at home (eight from ten this year), he put the team up in a hotel and treated their game against Brisbane as an away game. He bussed them to a “modest four star” hotel on Saturday afternoon. They spent the night “playing cards”, and then caught the team bus to their own home ground. This cost the club $5000, and was, in short, a masterstroke. CheckMATE Furner you wily fuck. The Raiders beat the Broncos and….well, let’s not get excited. We know how this goes. Win in flamboyant fashion one week, lose spectacularly the next. You could set your watch to it.

Brian Smith orchestrated something similar (sort of) a few weeks ago when the Roosters had an away game at Penrith. He organised a Roosters camp. IN ROOTY HILL. They lost the game. Obviously. Everything Brian Smith does is an exercise in industrial scale pointlessness. See also: Brian Smith hiring a crane from which to loom over training sessions like some kind of scrawny-necked omnipotent chicken-God. What he saw from his lofty position is not important. It was a pointless undertaking. It’s like how Doritos are always trying to come up with new flavours. They’re forever maniacally adding new elements to what is essentially mechanically-masticated corn fashioned into triangular shapes and doused with cheese-flavoured emulsifiers. This too is pointless. The fundamental components are unchangeable. One or two top notes may be tweaked to make Mexican Fiesta over into Spicy Nacho Chilli or whatever, but a Dorito is a Dorito is a motherfucking Dorito. By the same token, or maybe by a different token, I don’t know much about tokens per say, Doritos are delicious. Making corn into a chip. That is innovation. Those Incas and Aztecs, Mexicans, whoever, they knew what was up.

In light of this I’m pausing here a moment to give corn some consideration. I think it’s warranted. Corn is amazing.

Corn is the world’s first fully engineered plant. Those Central and Southern Americans, they did amazing things with food. They were the greatest cultivators in history and manipulated corn so comprehensively that it is wholly dependent on humans for its survival.

Consider this: Corn kernels do not spontaneously disengage from their cobs, so unless they are deliberately stripped and planted CORN WILL NOT GROW AND THERE WOULD BE NO CORN.

People, good people, using their bare worker hands, have been tending it continuously for thousands of years. This was before everyone was immersed in the erotic publishing phenomenon, obviously. Also, nothing in the wild even remotely resembles corn. What did they breed corn from? It has no counterparts! I’m not the only person to ask this question. In 1969 food scientists from all over the world hoped to settle the matter once and for all and convened at ‘An Origin of Corn Conference’ at the University of Illinois, “but the debates grew so vituperative and bitter, and at times personal, that the conference broke up in confusion, and no papers from it were ever published.”* So basically, corn’s origins remain as much of a mystery as ever. As mysterious, say, as the giant squids of the deep, with eyes as big as dinner plates. 

And you know how the fourth season of Jersey Shore was filmed in Florence Italy? Of course you do. Here is a bit of an interview with The Situation:  

Q. Was there anything you didn’t like about Florence?

A. I missed a lot of the things I took for granted in America – like Doritos. They’re impossible to find in Italy.

That was in case anyone needed further confirmation of the good work that those toiling South and Central Americans did. Horticultural innovations aren’t what they used to be. Coaching innovations aren’t either. Square watermelons? Tricking pliant and partially-concussed minds into believing they are playing away games at home? Please.

World's Toughest Truckers

Looking to cultivate impressive ways of spending your time this winter?

Aspiring to capital “c” culture while remaining sprawled on a sofa wearing a stained robe and slippers?

Do as I do and watch World’s Toughest Truckers on A&E.

It’s a great show. Gripping.

Here’s what happens:

Eight truck drivers converge on different continents and drive all manner of trucks in all manner of conditions carrying all manner of cargo.  Producers, capitalising on the fact that truck drivers are solitary, rebellious types who tend to be ill-tempered and uneven of temperament due to long-term amphetamine abuse, have divided them into pairs. This creates a good deal of conflict, confrontation and coarse language – the bedrocks of good reality TV. The coarse language is especially enriching because a) it comes in a great variation of colourful local vernaculars and b) it comes from the mouths of truck drivers, who are traditionally handy with an expletive.

There is a hideous man from Mobile, Alabama called Rookie. He is repulsive in an indefinable and unnerving way. His eyes are sly and shrewd and he has a sardonic slit of a mouth suggestive of barely leashed aggression and rat cunning. He also has an unpleasant, droopy moustache and a nasty, hectic disposition.  

He is paired up with an Australian, who is the amalgam of several thousand Australian men I have had dealings with in my lifetime. You know the type. You know the type because he is a type. See if you can spot him in that group photo.  

He and Rookie are not getting along. Their fraught mutterings have already spilt over into a blazing argument that saw them disembark from the truck so as they could abuse each other in a more spacious and expansive fashion. The Australian is very rigorous and thorough. He seems to be in possession of a logical and orderly mind. Rookie’s mind seems completely clapped out. He drives in a hell-bent fashion, and casually mows down a road sign without notice or concern. This causes the Australian a good deal of distress.

The only thing I like about Rookie is that he uses the word ‘bubba’ in the same way and to the same degree that we use ‘mate’. The effect, however, is startlingly different. Coming from Rookie, with his menacing air of ill-bred derangement, it basically sounds as seedy and grotesque as a word possibly can. 

There is another American called Shane. Shane declares himself “a dumb hillbilly from Tennessee”.  He is blubbery and sweaty and short-tempered. Shane wears denim overalls, which I believe people in the south refer to as ‘hog washers’ (calm yourself, ladies). It is my understanding that good ol’ boys called Leroy and Jim Bob wear them while they sit on the sagging porches of their hillbilly shacks in remote and lofty mountain hollows, whittling and planning their next incestuous act.  

Shane is paired with a trucker from Colombo, Sri Lanka, whose style is based on a Village People aesthetic. They too have failed to gel and came in in last place on the first leg.  Shane looks the most likely to fray and fall apart as the strain of being alienated from his life and his country takes hold.

There is a third American who I think was cast to counter the assumption that all American truckers are Southern and severely impaired. This one comes from Detroit and is exactly as you would imagine a truck driver from Detroit to be. Hardscrabble cities breed hardscrabble men.  

There is also a Canadian, who is like every other Canadian in that he is dull and inoffensive and devoid of a sense of humour. He is paired with a rotund Scotsman whose dialogue is impossible to understand and should be subtitled but isn’t.

This episode they were in Australia, transporting cattle from Cape York down to Mossman Gorge. There were soaring aerial shots of the top-end with an over-caffeinated American voiceover gleefully espousing the terrible dangers of the hostile Australian environment in that typically hysterical fashion that they seem to like. I say “they” but I like it too. And I really love seeing Australia through an American lens. It makes me feel terribly proud and patriotic. I was watching these immense Kenworth-whatevers speeding across the landscape throwing up cyclonic sheets of red dust as the drivers ground the shit out of their unfamiliar gearboxes and rained regional curses upon their inner workings, and all I could think was “is this a great country or what?”

What a great show.

America III