Who's the Boss? It's Braith Anasta, Bitch.

I meant to make a post about the Roosters but I fell asleep (so did the Roosters) for part of the game, and I mean that in both a literal and a metaphorical sense.

Literal because I was lying as close to the heat-making apparatus in my house as humanly possible and ended up so thouroughly baked by it that my eyeball fluids dried up and actually stayed stuck open as I dozed and reqired lashings of drops to lubricate them back into working, rolling order, and metaphorical because, well, the Roosters aren't really firing on many cylinders at the moment are they? Le snore.

This picture is the closest I could get to a visual, artistic rendering of the Roosters' season thus far:

As opposed to last year:

I don't even expect them to be good per se, but if they're gonna suck I feel like the least they could do is put on a vauderville style show of shittiness. The Raiders have done their fair share of this these last twelve rounds, as have the Titans, it's really only fair that the Roosters step up and do their bit to fulfil the NRL's requisite quota of comic relief. Submissions for ludicrous knock-ons, trips and falls, falcons, bad bounces, strings of incompleted sets, unforced errors and a dazzling inability to score tries are all welcomed. The application process is simple enough: show up and play like straight-up shit. Like the Cowboys did last year. They committed to the cause and it showed: they won just five or six games and amused us all with their endless foolishness.

Much has been made of last week's 'honesty sessions' at Roosters HQ, whereby players were apparently allocated a few minutes to vent their spleens and lay all their troubles on the table without fear of retribution or alienation at the hands of Brian Smith or teammates. Please.

Here is my interpretation of the aftermath of such sessions:

So. The Roosters' travel plans were thrown into disarray by the volcanic Chilean ash plumes, forcing them to fly to Albury and drive the rest of the way to Melbourne. This means that they were totally in my neighbourhood and could have popped in for scones and Bundy on their way through. An opportunity goes begging. Tres sad. Regarding this National Lampoon's Vacation style convoy, I have so many questions. Minivans or mid-sized Toyotas? Who drove, who got to ride shotgun and who got relegated to the backseats? Most importantly, WERE THEY ALL WEARING THEIR CLUB POLO SHIRTS??

This was one of the explainations offered up by Captain Braith Anasta as an example of the rampant lack of on and off-field discipline in the Roosters team this year - that even little things "like the boys wearing the right polo shirt on the team bus" were awry.

I love Braith Anasta. How can you not love Braith Anasta? I mean, honestly. How's the head on the guy? That head looks for all the world like it belongs on Mount Rushmore, and if he plays his cards right maybe one day it will be. Of course, the other great, Mount Rushmore-esque head of the modern era belongs undoubtedly to the great Paul Gallen.

That's right, it's Paul Gallen, bitch!

 

How great is that sequence above?! ANASTA. BRAITH ANASTA.
Still on Anasta's head, I have to say that he really offers up some of the greatest facial expressions of bemusement and befuddlement and dead-set ASTONISHMENT in the game.
Put simply, he has the best WTF face in the NRL.

Behold:

He doesn't just have the face for it though, oh no. He can run his mouth like it's nobody's business too. He is BITCHTASTIC. Braith Anasta is probably the lippiest captain around at the moment. To hear him bitching out refs is to bear witness to pig-headed panache at its best, and I fall in love with him a little more every time it happens.

Last night he hollered at the refs "While you two are over there chatting that clock's ticking down!" and was was scolded with a terse "Mate, we've been courteous to you all night..." to which he replied snappishly "I don't know about that", and who could blame him for being snappy, the Storm were sucking the life out of his team - and I use the word 'team' in the loosest possible sense because the rabble that's been showing up in the red white and blue this season in no way  resembles a team. Not if things like cohesion, unity, spacial awareness and instinctive understandings of game dynamics constitute a team, anyway. You gotta feel for the guy.


Carbs for comfort: Made from scratch, bitch!

 So, while the minus-the-big-three Storm side were slowly strangling the Roosters under the lights and volcanic shit-mist of AAMI Stadium, I was forced to focus on other things. The Storm bore me to tears and self-mutilation at the best of times, devoid of Smith, Slater and Cronk they leave me with no one to remorselessly hate on except myself. Boring!


The 'other things' were, first and foremost, the obscenely tight and short nature of Todd Carney's shorts.
I remember noticing last year that the entire team were rocking the teeny-tinies and thinking how whorey they all looked and not knowing whether I approved or not. I know they're from Bondi and are thus expected to embody a certain degree of whoreiness but really? Adam Blair's purple shorts were at least three times the size of Carney's, they looked postitively voluminous in comparison. Now, I love a man in a snug fit as much if not more than the next person. Why hide the merchandise, right? Fui Fui understands this concept instinctively:

Also, Carney is an envelope pusher in every sense of the word, it makes perfect sense that he would push and break through boundaries in fashion, HE'S A REVOLUTIONARY, PEOPLE. To show my support, all I really have to say is VIVA LA TESTICLE, because I know we're going to be seeing one soon enough.

It's all fun and games in roomy training shorts...

But come game time...
Shit gets real:

I know, right?