Canberra Raider Fans - A Guide

Raider fans can be divided into two loose groups*.

You have your deluded fools – know them by their seemingly bright but actually dead-from-never-having-lived eyes - and you have your weary fatalists – jaundiced, hollow of eye, with a keen sense of the absurd and the tragic and a propensity for passing dark comments concerning the soul-crushing shuffle toward grim death that passes for life.

If you’ve ever trudged down the cycle way and through the tunnel in the bush out the back of Bruce stadium to return to your freely-parked car after a rude loss in what was most probably just one in a spirit-sapping string of rude losses you will know them, this second type. 

Few who have stared into the void can resist the lure of anarchic, mounted-curb parking**. Something – or everything - about it attracts the jaundiced fan while the perky optimists who have never seen into the abyss or screamed into the sky hand five dollar notes to men in hi-vis vests for the privilege of parking in an orderly and easily accessible fashion.

If you don’t attend Raider home games, and quite frankly who can blame you, the delusionals are still easily identifiable. Just follow the Raiders on Facebook and scroll through the avalanche of comments that appear after every post. Like most breeds of idiot they are not shy about making their presence known.

I think this is the year for the Raiders. Go Raiders. Mack us proud boys. Goo the green machine! 2013 here we come. With Berrigan back we can’t loose!

I have nothing against delusions. Some of my best friends are delusional. But the reality writ large on a brightly lit screen can be jarring if your nerves are at all raw. It is for this reason that I suggested several Raider fans I know start filing their nerve endings in February. I did not know that Josh Dugan would run sharply afoul of coach Furner after only the first round and have his $650 000 a year contract most probably evapourate in a dramatic swirl of pre-mixed liquor and profanity.  I praise Jesus that I didn’t know either because no amount of nerve-filing could have prepared them for this and they would have rotted out with the weight of it.

So when the Raiders announce their round 1 team lineup on Facebook and they’re missing three of their four spine players and are without a goal kicker and several hundred people who are blind to weird and volatile realities post comments like GREAT SIDE and WE WILL CRUSH THOSE PANTHERS LIKE ANTS  -  there’s that one guy who writes “we’re fucked”. 

Well, guess what? He was right. We really are fucked.

And you know what else? We kind of like it that way.

*Please note that I am ONLY talking about Raider fans here. Do not assume that fans of other troubled clubs *coughCRONULLAcough* have the same or similar characteristics. For example, it is my understanding that fair portions of the Shire’s population have been inspired to go out and get commemorative Sharks neck tattoos this last week, rendering them eternally ridiculous. No, they are a team with their own unique problems and fans, and just as Germany is a country now forever stained in our collective consciousness by a string of poorly-received 20^th century wars and related unpleasantness, so too are the poor Sharks. It’s all very unfortunate but then show me something in this world that isn’t.

**Because everybody knows that the way you park provides clues about your essential character. Like when George Costanza compares parking garages to going to a prostitute: why should he pay for it when, if he applies himself, he can eventually get it for free? Yes.

Just Like George Costanza

"Do you ever yearn?"
"Yearn? Do I yearn?
"I yearn."
"You yearn?"
"Oh yes, yes, I yearn. Often I, I sit and yearn. Have you yearned?"
"No, not recently.."

- Kramer & George, Seinfeld, The Keys.

"I don't want much, fuck I drove every car -
Some nice cooked food, some nice clean drawers"

-Jay Z, Heart of The City.

I don't want much either. Two things, really.
One is to go to America, and the other is to have my own place, with space for a horse. Some other animals, too. Goats. Maybe peacocks.

I feel like having a horse would ease some of my irregularities. I drive down a dirt road to get to work. There is a white horse that stands by a fence that has a 'Strawberries for Sale' sign nailed to it, gazing. Everyday; standing, gazing.

Last week I watched someone ride their horse into the Murray. The horse went way out deep until only its head showed above the water. Something went pop in the middle of my chest and I pulled my car over and welled up watching. Things like this lessen the psychic strain of being alive in these weird times.

Thimking about America seems to have the same effect.

The greatest thing about my job is that it occupies my hands but leaves my mind free to wander. This allows me to think about America a lot. Like a lot a lot.

One day might be taken up by ruminating on the unique relationship Americans seem to have with pie. Or wondering about Walmart, and whether it's as godawful as people who claim not to shop there say it is. I obsess over the state names; in my head they are the most magical words in the world. Ohio. Alabama. Arizona. Kansas. Utah. Tennessee. They make me want to take a knife and carve them into soft skin.

Most of all, though, I think about the South. Not the moonlight and magnolias and mint-julep myth, but real Southern culture. It makes my mind rise up like boiling milk about to spill from a saucepan. Henry James called Southern culture a "great melancholy void", and I think "my God, the things I don't know, the places I haven't been. My God."

"I Like Sports, I could do something in sports.."

From the 'My Life is Alarmingly Similar to George Costanza's' file:

-I like sports, I could do something in sports
-Uh huh, uh huh... In what capacity?
-You know, like the general manager of a baseball team?
-Yeyh, well - that can be tough to get...
-Well, it doesn't even have to be the general manager - maybe I could be like an announcer, like a commentator - You know, I always make those interesting comments during the game?
-Yeh..yeh, you make good comments...
-So what about that?
-Well, y'know, they tend to give those jobs to...ex-ball players and people that are, you know, in broadcasting...
-Well that's really not fair.

Oh, George. Show me something in the son-of-a-bitch world that is.

Sam de Brito....ye gods.



Visual representation of inner turmoil: (Mine.)


Something alarming happened today.

Something that gave me the unpleasant feeling that there is a weakness in the very fabric of the world.

Something that made me think that some Rumplestiltskin like creature unscrewed a panel in the side of my head, reached in, and tore out a handful of Very Important Wiring while I slept last night.

How else to account for the fact that I just read something by Sam de Brito and found myself nodding assent?

I know. It's scandalous. Either I'm in worse shape than I thought or....... no. The alternative (that Sam de Brito is capable of making some kind of sense or striking some kind of chord is too terrible and destabilising a thought to entertain, so I won't. Ever.)

What is it I don't like about the guy, you ask?  (And by 'the guy' I mean his columns, obviously; and yes, I am completely comfortable judging him solely and with extreme prejudice on the basis of his weekly columns, what of it?) Well, everything, really. In his by-line photo he wears an expression that says "and I don't even work out". Everything about him screams "I watch Q&A." Basically he comes across as a deadset dickhead AND he's always talking about his herpes. Not just in passing, either. No, he talks about his herpes like he's the fucking Rosa Parkes of the STI movement.

Sometimes, for a change of pace, he talks about his hemorrhoids*. Now, let the record state that when Nathan Hindmarsh discussed his hemorrhoids on The League Lounge I was charmed. I did my happy, trained-seal-on-stage-at-SeaWorld flipper clap and I probably murmured "Oh, Hindy" approvingly too. You know why though, right? Because Hindy is infinitely likeable. He called one of his kids ROWDY - for reals - and he's still  hugely likeable. Sam de Brito, though, not so much. By which I mean, uh, not at all.

"Bondi", Sam?  It writes itself...

Nathan Hindmarsh's Arse. Don't ask me how or where I found this.

Anyway. Earlier this year my best friend told me that I needed to "get out there". You're familiar with this expression, yes? It's slightly abstract, granted, but it means getting oneself out on the scene, amongst it. Or something. I think it also means you don't wear moccasins in public, stuff like that. I personally can't hear or read the term without thinking of George Costanza, when his shrew of a mother, newly seperated, tells him she's getting an eye-job because she has to look good: "I'm out there now." This is upsetting for George, who is also 'out there': "YOU'RE NOT OUT THERE. YOU CAN'T BE OUT THERE - I'M OUT THERE!!" etc etc.

Well, Sam de Brito is 'out there' too. I learned this from reading his column, when, in between trying to squeeze in as many tragic refences to "truckie speed" and - I die writing this, I DIE - "disco biccies" he started writing about the trials of having to re-learn the rules of one night stands after breaking up with his girlfriend. Well, I'm with George Costanza on this one. I really don't think I can be 'out there' at the same time as this guy, frankly. It's irrational and absurd, but then so am I. Susu, if you're reading, I intend to stay 'in here' until Sam de Brito is no longer 'out there'.

This could take awhile.


Oh yeh, the column that had me nodding scandalised assent? It's really not important, but it was some shit about love and vulnerability, and it had a lot of sentences starting with the words "research reveals...", which is probably why I found it so readable and downright, surreally agreeable, actually. Here's a sample sentence:

"Research reveals that the single thing that keeps us from love and connection is believing we're not worthy of love and connection, and have I mentioned my raging herpes lately**?"

Say it again, Sam! It's good stuff, right?


*Behold: my first written reference to hemorrhoids - a milestone I thought worthy of special mention. It has an extra poignancy for me because I have no spellcheck on here, I had to look up HEMORRHOIDS in my Oxford. Is it not the hardest word in the world to spell? Harder than 'rhythm' or 'rhyme' or 'probably' even, GOD.

**Disclaimer: The last 8 words in that sentence may not have actually made it to print in Sam de Brito's actual column. HE WAS THINKING THEM, THOUGH.

One last thing. A post peppered with repeated refence to hemorrhoids and herpes? The Dream. I'm livin' it.

 See?